Lyka: A Furyan Necromonger
by Irish Ghost
Summary: Sometimes, things change for the best, and sometimes for the worst... Sometimes, one must wallow in the depths of depravity in order to make it on top... Nothing has gone right in my life, until now... My name is Lyka Riddick, and this is my story...
1. In The Beginning

It was a familiar dream, the one that had haunted her sleep every night for the last two years. Something had triggered the memory, if only she could remember what it was. Every night, that fateful day came back to remind her of exactly what she had lost…

* * *

_Her mother stood before her on the Plains of Destiny. She did not face her; instead, she stared out at the empty plains with mournful knowledge that was revealed only to her. Her mother, Shiira Riddick, was the leader of her people, the soothsayer that was able to see into the future as it pertained to the safeguard her people. Something had called to her that had worried her, or else neither of them would be here at this point in time. It was far too soon for this ritual. Why now?_

_Kneeling on the ground, Lyka Riddick gazed up at her mother and the look on her face brought about her solitary contemplation. Although she was only four years old, she was old enough to understand the utmost severity of the situation. She had inherited her mother's gift of foresight, but the visions that haunted her trances were nothing that a four year old should see. In her dreams, she saw only visions of fire and destruction, a man walking forward in armour holding a cord in his outstretched hands. Every time, she would wake with an ear-piercing scream that woke half of the village. There was nothing that she could do to stop these nightmares, because she was too young to begin her formal training into the occult arts shared by her bloodline._

_Shaking her head discretely as not to disturb her mother's thoughts, she brought herself back into the present as her mother turned back to her. _

_Shiira faced her, her deep brown eyes looking on with maternal worry at her only daughter. The micro-braids fell off her shoulders in a waterfall of near black locks; there was a shimmer of gray to the braids at her temples, but Lyka dismissed it as a game of the setting sun's light. Her skin, always a deep tan, shone today with a sprinkling of gold dust. The off-white robes that licked her ankles and hugged her ribs, encasing her body and ending just above her chest to leave her arms bare, flickered in the breeze. A golden torque clung to her bare upper arm. These were the robes of a priestess, the robes of duty. _

_Unlike other days, there was no smile on her mother's narrow face, only carefully hidden concern. Furyans did not display outright emotions of fear or anger; it was considered to be weak. Happiness, however, was treasured and cherished among the warriors of her people; it was something to be proud of when one bore a smile on her or his face. Since childhood, Lyka had trained herself to mimic her mother. At four, she was easily the mirror image. _

"_Child, it is time for you to leave your people. A time has come to keep you safe from the upcoming dangers." Shiira's voice was like the wind: powerful and yet flowing with motherly grace. _

"_But Mother-" Lyka meant to ask about her visions, whether or not it was time for her to begin her training into the mysteries of the foresight that both blessed and cursed her. Even if she was so young, she needed to begin that training before the nightmares would haunt her forever._

_Shiira held out her hand, silencing her daughter's questions. "You must learn for yourself the meanings of your portentous dreams. Now is not the time for that. It is time for you to fully understand what it means to be Furyan." A tear fell down Shiira's face before she hastily wiped it away. The wind moved her robes, revealing the silver handprint that shone on her heart through her breast-band. _

_Lyka was confused, but she did not speak. She was the progeny of two formidable bloodlines of alpha Furyans, the most powerful of her kind. Her father, unknown to her except in name, was the greatest of the warriors of her people, a fitting mate for the high priestess. All told, alpha Furyans were faster, stronger, stealthier, and more prone to violence than the rest of their kind; they also bore a penchant for making and using a whole variety of weapons, as they were capable of beating any opponent that challenged them. Her father was the best of them all. All of them bore that handprint, the reminder of their lineage and the power that it granted. _

_Lyka also bore the blood of her mother, the blood of a seer. Her mother's line was the oracle and the safeguard of the future of the Furyan people and of their planet, and had worked for the entirety of their lives to ensure that they would be safe from the scruples of other worlds. It was a great omen when the first child of Shiira and Richard Riddick was born a daughter, for only daughters were allowed to train in the occult arts. When she came of age, Lyka would take over her mother's place as the seer for her people. _

_Without another word of explanation, her mother crouched to the ground and placed her palm flat on the naked skin of her daughter's heart. A silver light shone from Shiira's callused hand, filling her daughter with shivering pain that imitated bone-shaking chills and horrible burns at the same time. However, Lyka said not a word; instead, she bit her lips and closed her eyes, grimacing through the pain that was part and parcel of this ritual. When the shivering began to subside, a painful rage accompanied with the grieving pains of countless lost generations filled the young girl-child. _

"_Only now do you realize the anger of our people, the fight for justice not yet completed. You, Lyka, must be the one to fight for your people when the time comes." Lyka knew her history: the Furyans were warriors only out of necessity. Other worlds had preyed on their precious natural resources, bringing their armies and their soldiers to kill their people in order to harvest that which was not theirs. Alphas brought the people together, and they clashed against the rising tide until their reputation alone kept them safe. No one wanted to fight a Furyan, let alone an alpha Furyan, for fear that they would lose their lives._

_After Shirra removed her hand, a handprint remained; it was silver and glowing against the deep tanned pallor of her daughter's skin. Lyka was still shaking slightly as her body experienced the aftershock from the transfer of power. She was now considered an alpha Furyan, even if she was still a youngling. It was exhilarating and yet draining at the same time as her body adjusted to its new power. Still, she remained on her knees just as her mother taught her, a solemn little girl-child. _

_Shiira stood from the ground, pulling something from the pouch that dangled from the belt strapped around her waist. Wrapping it in a piece of virginal white cloth, her mother placed it before her on the sparsely growing grass. Lyka picked it up from the ground and opened up the package. _

_It was a belt knife, one that every alpha Furyan wore and was proud to bear. It was a sign to others that they never went unarmed into a fight, and that nothing would stop them from winning, even at the expense of their life. Lyka was looking forward to this day ever since she could understand the meaning of its significance; she just never realized that it would come so soon. She revelled in the deep blue-grey shine of the curved blade as she drew it from the confines of its leather scabbard, admiring the golden inlay of the wooden handle. It was a clear chime that rang through the air as the knife slid back into the scabbard with one smooth motion._

"_Lyka, you must promise me this one last thing." Shiira slid her hand over her belly. Even though she was young, Lyka knew that her mother was going to give birth to another child, probably in the next four months. She had seen a squalling little bundle in the arms of her mother, but she was never with her little sibling. "You must protect your brother. He will need guidance in the years to come."_

"_I will, Mother." At that, Lyka stood up from the ground and began to walk towards her mother to try and give her any comfort to soothe the worrisome expression from her face. As she reached for Shiira's hand, her mother began to disappear into the mist before her eyes._

"_Mother!!" Anguish filled her as she tried to run towards her mother before she was totally gone. She was almost there, could almost touch her fading clothes…_


	2. An Exile in Paradise

"Lyka! Lyka!" A series of hard knocks rang at the locked door to her bedroom. She bolted from her bed, her bared knife in her hand. Adrenaline pumping through her system, she darted her glance around the room for the source of the disturbance.

"Lyka! Breakfast's starting soon! Are you even up?" There was a slight pause in her best friend's rant, before, "Lyka, come on! I'm starving!"

"Coming, Sulakma! You go on without me. I'll catch up." Lyka sighed, sliding the knife beneath her pillow for the time being. Swinging her legs over the side of her bed, she held her head in her hands for a moment before wiping away the sweat of the night with the back of her left hand. She pressed her other hand against her still rapidly-beating heart; the silver handprint always glowed more brightly than normal after her dreams. Sighing again, she got out of the tangled sheets and stood by her window, one hand gripping the wall for support as she oriented herself and calmed her body down from the unexpected wake-up call.

The sprawling forests of Aquila Major, extending for as far as the eye could see, greeted her with a tranquil breeze from their leaves. The masses of mighty oaks, quivering beeches, trembling aspens, and evergreen firs wafted their mild fragrances to her nose on the breeze. She could hear the gurgling of the series of streams and creeks as they interwove beneath the shadowy breaths of the thousand year old trees. The early morning summer sun was gentle this day, allowing her to slowly wake up. Little sunbeams found their way to the bevelled glass of the opened window, allowing a prism of colors to burst into the dorm room, adding their unique beauty to everything they touched.

Remembering the remnants of her dream, Lyka's heart ripped as she recalled the events that had led her here, starting with the naive promise that she had made her mother without foreseeing the consequences. She was an alpha Furyan; it was unacceptable to fail in any promise once it had been made, at least to her. And fail she did, for how could she have watched out for a brother that she had never laid eyes upon before? As her self-imposed punishment, she forced herself to carry the pains of the separation and loss of her planet, her mother, her father, and the little brother that she never knew. She had carried those pains ever since she came to Aquila Major, and she was not going to stop until she believed herself cleansed of her guilt; that time was unforeseeable in the near future, even to her. The handprint emblazoned on her chest served as a constant reminder of her birthright as both a warrior and a seer, and how she had failed to uphold the childhood promises that she had made to her mother.

Nothing would be able to replace the feeling of anguish as she was shipped off-planet to here, to the forest world that was so unlike her own. Her mother made her promise- one of the few promises that she managed not to break- that she would not reveal that she was Furyan; her story was that she was born on Helion Prime, and that she was being sent to Aquila Major to study there until her mother called for her again. She had been on this planet for thirty years, and still she was not at ease with her surroundings. The ragged plains and foothills that encompassed their homes and towns on Furya were replaced with the towering forests and the weaving rivers; the sudden bursts of the rare harsh sunlight through the clouds that covered the sky was replacing with the coldness of pitch-black night and the gentle rays of the day. It was never like a desert here, more of like an oasis that she never warranted, or even wanted for that matter.

It was when she was kicked off the courier at the landing bay by the callous crew members, that she realized how much of an outsider that she truly was in this world. The dean of the academy picked her up and brought her here, where she had stayed ever since that day. None of the other students would talk to a four-year old who walked down their hallways like the rest of them.

The dean took her under his wing and taught her the basic lessons of mathematics, reading, and writing; the rest of the subjects- history, languages, sciences- he had her learn in the repeat classes for the upgrading students. Ergo, she was often told that she was one of the most promising students of the academy, but nothing could replace a mother's praise or the giggles of a little brother, even if it came from a proud professor who viewed her as his adopted daughter.

Not even a whole year had passed since she had been shipped off-planet, when a force so great slaughtered every male below the age of thirteen on Furya as well as those who fought against it, leaving the women to grieve in agonizing sorrow. Even light-years away, she had felt the pain and distress rip through her body as it radiated from the handprint on her chest. When she first felt it, she had grasped her chest and cried out; when asked questions about what had happened, she had promised the concerned teachers around her that it was nothing, when it was so much more. Something kept nagging her, something that had burrowed itself deep in her heart that fateful day: Lyka had failed her mother in the task of keeping her little brother safe.

From that day, the day that she had cried aloud at the death of her people, she stopped showing her emotions freely. Everything she felt: anger, hate, sadness, even happiness and joy; she locked them all beneath a mask of stillness and serenity. She kept her emotions bolted away in a black box that resided in the deepest part of her brain, somewhere that the people around her would not think to dig into as they tried to understand the reasoning behind it.

At first, it was excruciating to control the impulse to crush anyone who disrespected her with her fists, an impulse exclusive to the alphas of her people. When she first arrived here on this foreign planet, she was a freak of unknown origins, an oddity among normalcy that everyone sought to mock, even her unsuspecting peers by their lack of action. Lyka would have sliced every one of their throats to silence the voices, but her mother would have expected more of her.

After a while, it became easier until she was able to remove herself completely from all of her emotions. It suited her just fine, but it always cut her heart a little every time her friends looked away from her with concern because of their thoughts for her emotional well being. Some of the more verbose students told her to her face that she was not worthy of being a student at the most prestigious academy outside of Helion Prime, if she had no emotions to fully enjoy the complete experience. Ignoring the instincts of her blood, she had just walked away.

Lyka pressed her hand once more to her heart as she turned towards her closet. Today was a more subdued day as she chose her clothes: a knee length tunic with slits going to her waist that was the color of the fog that had settled over the rivers and lakes outside the academy earlier in the morning; pants that flowed away from her legs and flared at the ankles in the color of black; a simple braided belt of jet and silver-dyed cotton. The tunic slipped over the torso and arms that she had muscled and worked from years of sword-making and martial arts. The pants covered the legs that had kicked and walked and run nigh near every day of her life since she arrived here. She made sure to wear the band underneath her tunic that hid both her chest and the silvery handprint from the curious eyes of students. On her feet, she slid into worn leather knee-high boots fit for running and fighting, but were also appropriate for working in the forge later that morning.

Going to the mirror, she gazed at herself. Her face, perpetually tanned from her time in the sun, had never blemished in her life. However, her almond-shaped eyes, golden like those of the falcons that nested in the mountains at the edge of the neighbouring forest, were beginning to crease in the corners from lack of sleep. Her slender nose wrinkled as she furrowed her brow for further inspection. Her delicate pink lips pursed as she gathered up the mess of midnight micro-braids that were mussed with sleep into a simple comb.

The necklace that lay over the hollow of her throat shone with the light of the early morning; it was a miniature silver falcon in mid-flight on a chain of gold, another of the gifts that her mother had given her before she was transported off of Furya. Scoffing at the little vanities that she took, Lyka stood back and surveyed her room.

It was an average dormitory room, the same one that she had lived since her arrival on this planet. There was the bed with the tangled sheets from her nightmare near the open window. Across from the bed was the mirror and vanity-stand which she was in front of. Right beside the bed was her desk, at which she both pursued the homework of her classes and the polishing of her knives. Slung over the chair was her satchel.

Near the closed door was a bookcase; only two of the four shelves were actually filled with the textbooks and books of fictional pleasure that she pursued in whatever free time she allowed herself. The rest of the shelves housed the collection of ten weapons that she carried with her everywhere. All of them were daggers or short-swords, but she had made them all with her own hands and they were all battle-worthy, according to one of her two favourite teachers.

Picking up her satchel, she began to gather up all of her knives and placed them in the special hideaway compartment in the satchel beneath the books and notebooks of her one academic class in the morning. She always brought all of her belongings with her; she never trusted the security of a locked door to keep her blades safe. Besides the clothes on her back, her collection of combs and hair pins, the blades on the shelf that she had forged, and the Furyan knife and necklace that she always wore, Lyka did not own too much in the way of things; still, everything was precious to her.

Before leaving to go to class, Lyka reached under her pillow for the knife that her mother had bestowed on her. Lifting up her shirt to tuck it into the small of the back, a feeling of security crept into her and steeled her spine. Gathering her emotions behind a calm face and straightening her satchel on her left shoulder, she left her room into the brightness and chatter of the hallways outside.


	3. The Debate and the Sword

Closing the door behind her, she could hear Sulakma laughing from against the wall on which she was lounging. "Finally, sleepy-head! What took you so long this time? Not even you need that much time for be beautiful for the guys here!" Slapping Lyka in the back, she led her down the halls to the mess hall. Lyka simply nodded her head: her friend was the exact opposite of her. While she herself was an introverted focused student, Sulakma Falfel of the pale skin, sea green eyes, and golden hair was extroverted and day-dreaming almost all the time, sometimes even skipping her classes to wander the markets on the bustling streets outside of the university.

Students gathered in the communal mess hall, some for their morning meals, other for conversations with friends and catching up on their homework. It was often here that Lyka spent her time breathing away her emotions until she was like the surface of a calm lake once more.

Darien Gusfat waved them over to their usual table; she was a third-year student trying to complete her second attempt at a philosophy major. She had a massive appetite for both food and debates. However, you could not tell that right away from her appearances: she kept her hands manicured, her hair tied back without a strand out of place, and her face and eyes lit with happiness constantly.

Before heading over to join in their conversation, Lyka picked up a glass of weak green tea and a plate of fruit and toast for her breakfast. She always ate big meals in the morning because she would not eat again until dinner that night. Today however, she was just not hungry. Nonetheless, she still picked up something to nibble on in order to halt her friend's possible reprimand of not eating. It got tedious after awhile listening to the constant lectures, even if they both meant well.

"Faith, that is what all this comes down to, isn't it Sulakma?" Chewing off a piece of ruby-red pomegranate, Darien began this morning's debate; the topics varied from day to day, but they had been discussing faith for the last week. Lyka knelt down to the ground in one easy motion, placing her small plate of food before her.

"All of what, Darien?" Chin deep in a slice of buttered bread, Sulakma tilted her head to the side.

"All of this. Life itself…" Lifting her manicured hand to the ceiling, Darien's silver eyes glinted with passion.

"But if life is about faith, then what is death, Darien?" Lyka sipped at her tea with a gentle slurp.

"Lyka, Lyka, Lyka… Death is also a part of life, isn't it?" Wagging the half-eaten piece of fruit at her, Darien spat out a couple of seeds to emphasize her point. 'Isn't that what they taught you on New Mecca?"

Lyka held her breath. To avoid being even more of an outsider, she had kept yet another promise to her mother and told her classmates that she was from the Islam quarter on Helion Prime, it being the closest planet that was on a normal orbit. Still, this caused her to feel yet again ashamed over the secrecy of her real heritage. She was an alpha Furyan; she should not have to hide who she was. On this planet, no one understood the inexplicable ways of Furyans and the effect of the sporadic orbit that caused it to appear at random times, so she pretended to be something more accepted to avoid becoming a pariah from her culture. However, the result was that she was slowly becoming a pariah from her very emotions.

"I may have lived in New Mecca, Darien, but my faith was not of the neo-Islamic people around me." Lowering her cup, she reached for a sliced blood orange on her plate to chew on.

"Here we go again," Sulakma chuckled as she slurped loudly at her water, slopping some over the edge of the glass.

She sighed at the side comments of her friend, putting the uneaten blood orange back on her plate. "Listen: if this life was a mistake, an error in evolution, then death could be the answer, the gateway into the life where we will all be cherished and loved. I mean, think about it. If we waste this life, what's left for us to do but begin again after death? I mean, think of the possibilities if one could have a second chance to live again? Death is not part of life, Darien: it is the gateway to the beginning of life."

Both of them began to laugh at her proclamation; Sulakma fell on the ground, clutching her sides from the laughter. "By the ground below, Lyka, you gonna kill me one of these days! Death as the real life!"

Lyka was used to the laughing and the mocking of her friends. The words that she spoke were the basis of her personal faith. When she was sent off-planet, a part of her died as a child. In that moment, she realized that to lose a part of yourself, to die, was to truly live; what other reason could there be for her to still be here on Aquila Major, to have to listen to her friends mock her ideals.

"But really, Lyka," Darien wiped the tears from her eyes with her sleeve. "If death is truly the beginning of life, then what has that done for the Furyans who were massacred all those years ago? What about the slaughter of the men and women who go to any of the countless wars for the protection of others they don't even know? Did they find their life renewed when they died?" A dribble of pomegranate juice ran down her chin from the corner of her mouth; it looked as if blood was running down her chin.

At the remark about Furyans, Lyka's face drew together and calmed into a mask of serenity as she took the blooming anger and tucked it deep within her black box. The comment, made so casually in the midst of friends, cut her to the deepest part of her core. To avoid lashing out at her friend with her fists, she picked up her bag and got up from the ground and walked away from the laughter. How could she answer that question, if her people who were butchered for no reason were happy in their afterlife? Taking a deep breath, she walked away.

Shaking her head, Lyka gathered herself and went to her first of her two classes of the day. Darien tried to call her back to the table in her laughing way, but Lyka simply walked away. Her fists, curled until her knuckles were white, were stuffed into the pockets of her tunic.

It had been thirty long years for her since the planet-wide slaughter of the males of Furya, thirty long years since the sure murder of her mother, father, and brother. Nothing would assuage the guilt of the failure of her oath, the same oath that her mother made her take before she was shipped off Furya.

Five minutes, she walked among the endless nattering of the other students. As she leaned against a column that lined the corridor, Lyka felt the dizziness of a vision begin to overtake her. "No, no, no!" Her visions had not come to her in over two years, but the dreams had taken their place for that duration of time. Almost always, her visions were dark and macabre: something terrible was happening and she was powerless to stop them. She felt herself collapse against the column, feeling herself float into the dream world that called her.

Meaningless pictures flooded her psyche. A man dressed in a massive white bearskin running along an icy canyon. Welding goggles covering eyes embedded in a darkly tanned face. A man in armour, four faces on a helmet. Armies desecrating worlds. Screams of women and children as they ran. Blood, streams of blood flowing through streets.

Suddenly, she was released from its thrall. Her head was splitting in two as she cradled it. It was as if she had had too much pomegranate juice and it gave her a massive headache. She waited a moment or two for the last tendrils of the vision to recede before standing up. The visions always left her tired, but she had classes to attend. She trundled her feet down the hall, not paying attention to which way she was going.

Lyka let her feet lead her to the entrance of the school's smithy. This, along with her private quarters, was her sanctuary from the world. The teacher here understood her need for solitude, her need to make weapons. It was another impulse of her people to collect weapons and learn to use them with the utmost skill. This class was the perfect outlet for her ever-growing frustration.

"You're early today, girlie. Class doesn't start for another hour. Something's on your mind again?" The sword-making mentor, Willai, stood over her as she tied her apron around her waist and shoulders and pushed her sleeves up to her shoulders.

Although he was a man of sixty-some years old, his black-skinned muscles were taut from years of producing blades; his arms were burned silvery in some places from the heat of his forge and the red-hot of the blades as he tested them against his own skin. Bare from the waist up, this man never sweated; his skin only glistened from the remnants of the water that he splashed on himself to cool down.

"Nothing's wrong this time, Willai." Lyka reached to the shelf for her latest work-in-progress. It was a forearm-and-half hip sword for her collection and for her final grade; she had poured the molten steel into a mould in order to get a good balance. The blade itself led into a rough steel hand-and-half cruciform hilt. After a week of non-stop hammering, straightening, and tapering the edges, it now shone with the blue-grey of tampered steel. All that was left was to sharpen the edges, fashion a scabbard, and add some decoration to the once polished and smoothed hilt, pommel, and guard.

Gathering up a whetstone among the tools at her disposal, she dipped the stone in water and ran it along the edges of the blade back and forward, back and forward. Out of the five hours she had allotted herself until the end of the class to finish the blade, this alone would take half an hour of non-stop motion. When she was satisfied with the angle of the blade, the edges cut a piece of leather with a single motion and no hesitation or resistance.

Lyka now had four and a half hours left; that was more then enough time for her to complete the commission. Grabbing a file and coarse file-paper, she rubbed them up and down the hilt and guard for an hour until they were smooth to the touch and not able to leave metal shavings in the hands of its users. Taking a small hammer, she added a little bronze leaf design on the guard, a little sunburst to mimic the decoration that she was planning to add as the pommel. By now, other students in the class were filing in to complete their final blades.

"Well, what are you gawking at, boys?" Willai blocked Lyka from view as her classmates stared at her in confusion. "Class began an hour ago, and you'd all better have decent blades for me to grade!" At the words 'an hour ago', the boys rushed to the shelves and pulled out their work. Soon the forge was filling with the sound of hammers pounding against anvils, swords against whetstones, and grinding of the files against the raw or finished steel.

Willai always looked out for her. Ever since she came to the university, the master of sword-making took her under his wings. For the first two years of her stay, she locked herself in her room after her lessons, barely eating and only when forced to do so. It was he who first harnessed her interest in swords and weaponry, coaxing her to come out of her shell. In his spare time, he taught her the difference of the weaponry in societies: how the New Meccan men wore a ceremonial dagger given by their fathers at their side when they came of age; how the men of Aquila Major always learn sword-fighting till the age of twelve.

When she expressed interest in making her own blades, Willai set her up in a class; despite his best interest, it served to separate her further from her peers since she was the only girl in a class of male teenagers and young adults. Regardless of the massive difference of the genders in the class, it was from there that he watched her blossom. It seemed to her that this was one of the few things that made her genuinely smile.

Willai also got her access to the school's martial arts facility. His friend and fellow teacher, Master Feng, worked her to the bone to sharpen her skills. He constantly enforced the idea that her body was a weapon as well, and that it too needed to hone its abilities. Lyka was so enthralled by his casual after-school sessions that she had signed on for one-on-one training until she became the highest-ranking student in her graduating class. He had taught her in the style of plains animals: striking quickly with both feet and hands, using all her force behind every blow, increasing her stamina and endurance until she was able to practice to the fullest of her being for an entire day without stopping for a rest. Master Feng had a habit of never smiling, but he always hinted to her in little gestures that he was immensely proud of her accomplishments that grew under his tutelage.

Lyka shrugged off the memories and the noises of the classmates, all of whom were now frantically trying to finish their blades; most of them had not even started working on the scabbard to hold it. She picked up a stack of five leather hides that were stretched thin and cut one of them to the right size for her short-sword. Afterwards, she sewn them together with the waxed hair of horses into a shape that would fit the sword snugly; this way, her tight stitches would not come undone in rain or the very rare snowfall. The scabbard itself she coated inside and out with a thin layer of resin; this would further protect the scabbard from the motions of drawing the sword constantly. At the very end of the scabbard was a steel tip to protect it from the point of the sword.

Next, she braided rawhide where the sword would meet the scabbard to add supplementary protection. As an additional piece of decoration, Lyka sewed a small sunburst-and-fire sigil at the point of the scabbard where the braiding met with the sword; she also sewed a tiny arabesque design of yellow, red, and gold threads that followed the lining of the stitches.

Now that a half hour were left in class, Lyka was the only one with a sword and scabbard ready to be marked; however, she was not completely finished just yet. She soldered a small bronze embellishment to the hilt's end: an ornate sun, its rays at once extending outwards and curving inwards. Taking up a piece of shark-skin, she carefully cut it to the size of the hilt and wrapped it around the bare metal; she favoured this particular material for the grip of the hilt because it was able to ensure a non-slip grip for all of the users. Satisfied with the near-finished product, the last thing that she needed to do was braid and weave gold and silver wire to secure the grip, cover the tang, and add some level of comfort to the hilt.

At that, her commissioned project was finished with fifteen minutes left to spare. Lyka slid the short sword into the scabbard with one clean motion. Wrapping the entirety in a piece of white fabric, she handed it over to Willai for grading.

Willai was not like other teachers in the university. He didn't take weeks to mark a single project; it took him about five minutes to examine both the sword and the scabbard. Withdrawing the short-sword from the scabbard, he inspected the ripples of the constant hammering and drawing into the water that Lyka performed to strengthen the blade. He whacked the flat of the sword against the anvil next to him; it produced a clear chiming ring throughout the forge that caused all of the students to stare at her. To complete the examination of the sword, he maneuvered the sword in the air until it sliced through the heady steam of the forge with a crystal chime.

The next and final step of the process of marking was the scabbard. Grunting at the quality of the leather, he felt the resin protecting the sword to be solid and dry. Running his fingers along the stitches, he noted the minute swirling of the threads and its echoing effect on the handle. He took in the braiding and tip with a nodding glance.

"Hundred percent, Lyka." He handed the sword back to her, its hilt over his wrist and the bare metal of the blade in a loose grip. Sticking the scabbard in her rope belt, Lyka bowed to him before leaving the rest of the class to give up a piece of slipshod work to try and impress Willai and his extraordinarily high standards.

Back inside of her room after a brief shower, Lyka changed out of her work clothes and into another identical set with a rare smile on her face. The hot sweat from the forge had purged the darker thoughts of the dream and vision from her consciousness. For once, there was nothing but the present, and right now, she was hungry. Five hours pounding on a sword and sweating amongst a horde of young men can do that to a person, especially if the breakfast was not satisfactory to begin with.

Running down to the mess hall with the new forearm-and-half sword slapping against her thigh, Lyka filled her plate with a bowl of hearty pork and bean soup and a warm bun. Placing her tray in the window seat, she pulled out her newly-made sword to inspect it in the light. It shone with the brilliance of the mid-day sun, the polished edges splitting up the sunbeams into a prism of colors on contact. It was a thing of beauty, and she had made it on her own.

Without a second thought, she claimed the blade for herself. Feeling the sharpened edges with the pads of her fingers, she cut her palm deep enough to bleed over the sword. When the blood ran down the edge of the sword, it was christened to be hers. Working quickly before any of the few students still in the mess hall were given cause to feel frightened, she wrapped her hand in a spare piece of cotton. Taking out another piece, she wiped down the blade prior to sliding it back into the scabbard at her hip.

Lyka drew out from her satchel the notes for her next class: herbology and its applications. After the four months that she had left for her stay at the university, she wanted to go to become a naturopath, a healer of natural methods. Her other classes included anatomy, chemistry, natural biology, philosophy, and botany; all of her teachers, Willai and Master Feng included, were ready to give her a letter of reference when she graduated to help her on her way to becoming the successful doctor that they all knew that she could be.

Just thinking of her teachers and their constant flow of praise made her heart swell with pride beneath the controlled expression of her face. Maybe through this career path, she could begin to heal the aches of her own soul.


	4. The First Encounter

Something distracted her from reading through the classification of the fifty plants that were assigned from the previous class. Lyka's ears perked at a foreign sound, and yet it drove a dagger in her heart with its familiarity. It was the sound of plasma shots from guns meeting flesh, the screams of women and children as their husbands and brothers fell dead at their feet. Darting a glance at the darkened sky above, Lyka jumped to her feet at the sight of the black sky with ships flying about, destroying the Aquilan forces with brutal precision. A comet pierced the sky like a mighty sword, sending out more small ships on their way to destroy this planet.

Without a further thought, Lyka ran down out the hall; she drew her sword without hesitation. Her alpha Furyan instincts kicked in and told her to fight now and ask the foolish questions later. Sprinting down to the entrance of the university, she hid behind a column as she beheld the bloody melee before her eyes.

Scores of soldiers in steel-grey body armour marched through the streets killing anyone who resisted. Some of the soldiers had deformed cripples on leashes that crept through the streets, watching what they saw through screens. At various street corners, small craters were filled with bodies of both the foreign and Aquilan soldiers. The Aquilans were fighting bravely and with everything that they possessed, but nothing would stop the never-ending rush of these maddened soldiers from destroying everyone in their sight.

Her vision came back into her mind. The blood flowed through the street from the dead soldiers. Women and children screamed as their family fell to the ground around them. Realization struck her mind as the pictures filled in the vision's puzzle. This was the army that destroyed worlds. Chills ran up her spine as they ruthlessly cleaned out the streets of all sentient life.

Thinking again, Lyka stuck her blade back in its scabbard and walked back into the university. Her handprint was burning against her clothes, urging her back to the fight. Lyka knew that even if it was against the codes of her people to not follow the impulses that came from its pulsing through, she would not die for a people that cared so little for her. She would gladly give her life for another Furyan, but not a people who mocked her and forced her to hide away who she truly was. By now, so many of the students were in the halls, wondering at the battle going on in the streets.

"Lyka, what's going on?" Sulakma shoved her way to the front of the crowd and shook her best friend's shoulders until her knuckles were white.

"Soldiers are taking over Aquila Major." Shoving off Sulakma's hands, Lyka raised her own to quiet the chaotic mob of students before her. "The best tactic right now is to go underground to the shelter. Bring only what you can take with you." At the gathering noise, Lyka raised her sword in the air once more, its ringing reverberating throughout the crowded hall and shattering the worried talking into an eerie silence.

"As students, we cannot afford to both preserve the learning of this institution and to defend ourselves against the foreign invaders. Better that we preserve our learning for future generations." Some of the teachers nodded at this as they walked back to their classrooms; probably to gather up as many of the texts as they could carry to the shelter built underneath the university. It was a safe-ground that was able to fit everyone attending the academy. If the students were smart enough to remember a decent supply of food and water, they could last down there for as long as need be.

When she was done talking, Lyka turned away from the student body and walked down the stairs to the glaring sunlit road, shoving her sword back in its scabbard. She was not one of the students; she would rather die fighting then cowering like a scared dog. The bodies of the recklessly brave Aquilan soldiers were strewn on the ground, mixed with the uncountable bodies of the foreign fighters; the wreckage of several fighter ships had set nearby buildings blazing.

A warrior marched up to her and grabbed her shoulder. "Come on; the Lord Marshal wishes to speak to you all." Out of instinct, her hand reached for the grip of her new blade. Turning around, she faced her new enemy. His steel armour was thick, too thick for her to kick through to do any damage. The arm-and-half sword in his hand was too great of a threat for her to combat, either. Lyka had only one choice: she removed her hand from the hilt of her sword and walked down to the courtyard of the university with the strange fighter to guide her down familiar roads.

With everyone gathered on the rugby fields, the soldier let go of her shoulder and began to march around the assembled Aquilans back to his formation. Curious, Lyka pushed herself forward past the crying of mothers without husbands or sons to the front of the crowd. Behind her, she could see the rest of the students from the academy being herded into the group; stupid fools, why did they not listen to her? Every cry reminded her of the failed oath that her mother made her swear before she was shipped off planet. Shaking away the pain of the memory, she gazed ahead of her.

Two men stood before her. Standing up on a concentric set of circular platforms, they stood out amongst the color of the native men and women. Both were paler than the moon itself, but that was where the similarities ended. One of them wore a long leather jacket with matching pants; it looked similar to a paramilitary or gestapo style. At the throat was a thick golden clasp. His shoulders, knuckles, and the top of his head were covered in an exoskeleton of jet with gold filigree; the helmet cradled his ears in an uncomfortable-looking net. His eyes were a blue so washed-out they looked nearly white.

Looking closer, Lyka spied that there were small indentations in the middle of his neck; they lined up with his ears to form a straight line. He looked not at all out of place, since there was a group of similar-looking men and women who were wandering amongst the trembling Aquilans; wherever they went, the once-proud Aquilans cowered in their presence and parted like a wave before them.

The other man was obviously in charge of the entire invasion of the planet. This must have been the man that the soldier referred to as the "Lord Marshal." An iridescent cape flowed to the floor from his shoulders. He was wearing the same armour as the soldiers surrounding the group, but with one exception. A strange-looking helmet covered his entire head save for his pale face; its sides were moulded to look like human faces, but the steel shone with inhuman feelings. Whenever he moved, it seemed that a shadow separated from him and preceded his actions before attaching itself back within his body.

Lyka gasped. This was the man from her vision. He obviously held some importance to her future. Yet he was the leader of these murderers, these world-killers. Lyka reined in her feelings and gazed around the group of captured Aquilans. The foreign soldiers walked among them, as if trying to stir them into completely surrendering.

But it was the eyes of all of the foreigners that stirred Lyka's curiosity. Whenever they looked at you, they seemed to pierce your soul with a single glance. Every set of eyes was glazed over in a supposedly sympathetic look, and yet pain seemed to follow their every movement over the crowd.

The man with the leather tunic with golden filigree began to speak over the murmurings of the captured crowd. "In this plane of existence, life is antagonistic to the natural state of being. Here, humans in all their various races are a spontaneous outbreak, an unguided mistake. Our purpose is to correct that mistake, because there is another plane of existence, a plane where life is welcomed and cherished. A ravishing, ever-new place called UnderVerse. But the road to that plane crosses over the threshold of death."

The soldiers standing amidst the crowd yelled in unison. "Threshold! Take us to the Threshold!" The Aquilans around them huddled closer together in wanton protection.

Lyka was enthralled by his words: this was the very faith that she believed in! She never comprehended that there were others like her, let alone an entire society! She pushed herself to the very front of the crowd to listen to more of the man's explanation. Some of the soldiers glared at her before turning their eyes back to the speaker.

The man continued to speak over the growing din of fearful debating among the Aquilans. "So this plane must be cleansed of life, so that UnderVerse can populate and prosper. Look around you." He pointed to the various soldiers in front of him. "Every Necromonger in this courtyard, every one of the Legion Vast that just swept aside your defences in a matter of hours was once like you. They fought as feebly as you tried to do. Every Necromonger that lives today is a convert."

The men standing beside Lyka begin to stir in anger at the man's mention of feebleness. They would probably try something stupid like attempting to fight back. However, that did not bother her. Nothing concerned her now of this world; soon, she would be free from the tormenting times that she suffered here at the hands and words of her fellow students. The man's words convinced her that this was the way to become cleansed of her fears.

The man who had converted began to speak again. "It was hard for me to accept when I first heard these words, too. However, I changed. I let them take away my pain. Now I lead the elite chosen to purify the hordes of non-believers. It will be the same for you when you change; you must realize that only those who have embraced the Necromonger faith can cross the threshold to UnderVerse."

That was all that she needed to hear. Pushing through the barrier of soldiers, she strode up to the lowest platform in front of the Purifier. Taking a deep inhale, she walked up the two steps to the feet of the Lord Marshal, ignoring the soldiers who tried to stop her. Behind her, the din rose as they tried to protest her decision. Some of her fellow students yanked at her tunic to make her stop.

Ignoring all of them, the students, the soldiers, and the teachers, she unsheathed her sword and knelt at the feet of the leader of the Necromongers; just as Willai had done earlier that day, she placed the hilt of the sword over her proffered forearm, holding the naked blade in her hand. The Lord Marshal looked amused at the sight of her, while the Purifier looked somewhat pleased behind a mask of indifference. She offered no words, just the hope that her silent actions would suffice in expressing her decision of allegiance.

"Traitor! You traitorous little bitch! We trusted you!" Sulakma was restrained by the same group of mutinous men, but just barely; else, she probably would have throttled Lyka before the whole of Aquila Major. Lyka offered her once-friend no gaze, instead staring at the ground at the Lord Marshal's feet.

Still not looking in her once-friend's direction, Lyka spoke up. "I was never one of you, Sulakma. Why should you be offended when my choice differs from yours? A question for you, my friend: why do you trust me one moment, and then insult me to my face the next?" Her voice let loose some of the venom that she had tamped back for thirty years, lacing her voice in a hard unforgiving tone that she knew caused some of the people behind her to step back in shock. "Why do you choose to mock me behind my back, and then accept me as your friend in the public light? I was the one who trusted you, Sulakma, and it was you and everyone around you that betrayed me!" Her voice grew harder, but she managed to rein in her control over her emotions before she surrendered to the need to drive her sword through Sulakma's heart.

Smiling, the Lord Marshal accepted her sword, admiring its craftsmanship in his hand as he raised her to her feet. He lifted her lowered chin to gaze into her falcon's eyes. "You are the only one, child? The only one to wholly accept our ways and convert of free will?" He gazed out at the crowd; Sulakma's rage had stirred up other students who had trusted Lyka and had not gone down to the shelter like she had advised them to do. His eyebrow lifted in amusement as he cocked his head to one side and handed her back her sword.

The Purifier who had inspired Lyka to join the ranks of the Necromongers pulled at her tunic. "If you are decided to be the only willing convert of this planet, then come with me child." Without even applying pressure to his grip, she followed in his footsteps. As she walked, she slid her new blade back into its scabbard. For some reason, she felt her stomach twist; to solve this, she stuck her left hand in her satchel, reaching to reassuringly finger the handles of her blade collection.

When Lyka passed Sulakma in the parting crowd, her friend spat in her face in utter disgust. Others held Sulakma back by her shoulders and arms, but their faces wore the same expression of disgust and betrayal. Thoughts rolled underneath her stilled face: they honestly trusted her, but they still saw fit to mock her? This time, she had had enough of their two-faced lies. She made no move to wipe the spittle from her face; instead she just continued walking behind the Purifier with her head held high. There was nothing to be ashamed of in a choice, and she bore enough shame as it was.

When the Purifier stopped walking in the middle of the city's centre square, Lyka gazed above him. Before her stood a monolith of massive proportions implanted halfway into the ground. It was probably the size of two- no, three vertical rugby fields. Made of solid steel, at its very top was an echo of the Lord Marshal's helmet: four stoic faces, one in each direction of the compass. Looking to the distant horizon, there were four identical copies of these statues that had landed into the ground around the entire city.

At the base of the monolith, people began to walk out of a gigantic landed cruiser surrounded by hundreds of frigates. The first thing that she noticed was that the majority of them wore black or grey; a few individuals broke the mould with a flash of gold or a glimmer of green. Other than that, there was no color. All of the women wore their hair piled on their head, whereas the men mostly had their heads completely shaved clean. As every person walked past her, they nodded their heads to the Purifier leading her on. As she looked closer without being too conspicuous, all of them bore the same marks on their necks as the Purifier before her.

The Purifier saw her slowing down, and assumed that she was frightened. "Do not be afraid, young one. This is the Necropolis, the home of all Necromongers once they have been converted. Very few of the unconverted have the honour to see its interior." The Purifier motioned for her to walk up the stairs into the cool interior of the largest ship.

Lyka's jaw could not help but to drop. A mass of grey and black hues rushed to her eyes. As she walked, the sound of her thin-bottomed boots slapping the steel floor echoed in the vastness of the hall. All around her, there were statues of men; they were modeled to look as through they were experiencing excruciating pain. Some have swords protruding from their torsos; others were being crucified or scourged. The walls were corrugated steel beams. The floor was decorated by a tarnished golden sun, probably an acquisition from an earlier conquest. It was very dark, and yet very gothic in its design.

Walking down a hallway, the Purifier stopped at a door. Running his hand over the handle, it opened at his will. "These are your new quarters. Change and come back outside when you are ready to be converted."

Clutching her bundle of belongings close to her, fear compelled Lyka to walk in the room and gaze around. When she was inside, the door slammed behind her, making her jump at the sound.

There was a bed made with black sheets that glimmered in the dim light from the ceiling. On the bed, a black tunic and pant were laid out for her; they were of the same style as hers without the belt. In the corner was a small desk for her clothes and any work that she wanted to do. Next to it was a small basin of water with a mirror above it, partly-concealed the entrance to what looked like a shower. That was it. This was her new home.

Inhaling deeply, Lyka placed her belongings with care on the bed and changed into the clothes provided for her. To cry now would simply destroy her; she had made her choice. After this, everything else would be a simple test of her faith; there would be no regrets. Her shoes, she discarded in the corner of the room. Without her hand-and-half sword strapped to her side or the weapons in her satchels near her, she felt somewhat incomplete. However, she still had her Furyan blade, now strapped to her forearm, and the necklace at the hollow of her throat; those small items that her mother bestowed on her so many years ago suddenly gave her comfort.

Walking out the door, she tugged at the sleeves of her new tunic to cover her hands, to hide the fact that she was beginning to shake. The Purifier motioned for her again to follow him further down the hall. Her heart was beating so fast that Lyka could have sworn that it was beating in her throat. It was here, in a different room that she came upon her newest challenge.

A medieval-looking machine waited in the centre of the room. Two manacles for her wrists hung five feet off the ground, enough for her to get some purchase for her to stand. The Purifier took her hands in front of her and guided her to the machine; there was the feeling of cold metal and the snap as her bared wrists were secured to the manacles.

"Child, this is the test for your conversion. In order to truly understand what it is to be a Necromonger, you must learn to realize one thing." He looked calm as he manoeuvred her arms so that they were bent at an angle over a piece of steel for her elbows and armpits.

"Wh… what is that, my lord?" Lyka was frightened, something she had not felt since she left Furya, not even during her intermittent visions. Her heart began to race; her breathing came in ragged pants.

"That one pain can lessen another. I sense that you have much pain and anguish inside of you, child. With this mark and the completion of the gauntlet, you will have learned how to be free of it." He ran the tips of his fingers along her cheekbones; at that single touch, the hair on the back of her neck rose off her skin.

With that, he lowered another piece of the machine: two viciously sharp blade tips that pointed into the skin of her neck. A tear fell down her face; shame shattered her composure as more fell. She could no longer face the Purifier before her for fear that he would think her unworthy. Instinct told her to fight the bonds that disabled her from fighting, but her common sense told her to hold still.

"Before you can be converted, have you any belongings on you?" His voice sounded concerned, but he did not release her from her bonds.

Nodding, Lyka tried to wipe the tears away with her restrained hand to very little success. "Yes; there's a necklace at my throat, and… and a blade on my left forearm, master." The Purifier was unwontedly gentle as he removed the Furyan articles from her and placed them on the floor out of her reach. His touch was cold as death as his fingers grazed her arm as he undid the straps of her knife.

"The pain goes away after a while, child. I promise you." The Purifier lifted her head into the light. "Are you ready?" Lyka took a deep breath, and nodded once. With a single motion, the machine lifted her from the ground so that her feet were dangling. The Purifier lowered the blades and tightened them so that they pierced her neck. She gasped at the pain, her eyes growing wide at the initial wound.

"I'll be back for you, child. All in due time." He closed the door behind him as the pain overtook her body. After that, it was nothing but black…


	5. Transformation

A lightning bolt of pain struck her body in that instant when the blades gently pierced the skin of her neck, but she could not cry out no matter how she tried; her voice was muted by the blade's impact. Her vision was turning black from the pain, so great that her physical vision was blinded by it. Her third eye opened wide and began to zoom in and out of her nightmares as she tried to fight off the pain. Her hearing shattered from the silent scream that imploded in her brain. She could feel her face grimace in pain, but there were no words, not yet at least. Despite her efforts, she could not struggle; the blades at her throat and the manacles holding her wrists in place made sure of that. She was doomed to endure this for how ever long it took.

An image of her mother's outreached hand and the fires that destroyed her world flashed through her mind. Her mind played tricks as she felt a sword slash down her mother for trying to protect her young brother, the life being drawn out of her as she lay bleeding on the plains. She moaned again as she saw her father fighting over his mate's body, and seeing the sword being rammed into his torso forced her to fight even harder against the restraints to get to her parents. Flashes of her friends and the others of the academy chuckling at her behind her back before coming over to her and slinging arms over her shoulders as if they were the best of friends filled her thoughts until she groaned from the pain. The shame and the other emotions that she kept tamped down tightly in the deepest recesses of her cerebral cortex sprung out and made her gray matter turn to slush and flood out of her eyes and ears.

Everything that she hid from the world: her emotions, her shame, her true identity; she felt every emotion stab her weakened psyche and made her feel the raging whole of her hidden self, the self that was furious at Lyka for being unworthy of the title of alpha Furyan. She could feel her insides being destroyed by invisible blades that threatened to murder her if she did not purge all of that emotion. Finally, she screamed; the room must have been sound-proofed since no one came to aid her in the unrelenting pain. Her voice rapidly grew hoarse until it was gone completely, and still she continued to scream. The cords in her neck stretched out beyond her skin to try and combat the torture as she screamed until her vocal cords were rendered mute. Every time that she moved to lessen some of the blades' pressure in her neck and the weight of her arms over that stupid piece of steel that supported her arms in that position, more of her emotions leaked out of herself until she was completely drained of everything.

In the deepest part of her core, she realized that there was no more pain, no more emotion. She opened up her eyes ever so slightly; the blades no longer hurt when she flinched at the light that shone down on her. There was no more emotions concealed that needed to be drained away. The muscles of her neck, chest, and torso were tired as she began to breathe once more. She felt nothing except the river of sweat crawling down the length of her spine and blood dripping from her neck wounds in small streams; even that was not all that very noticeable.

Lyka opened her eyes fully, blinking to acclimate herself to her situation. The light from the ceiling was dim, but it was strong for her to realize that she had been hanging for at least four hours. It had taken that long for all of the poison within her to purge itself out of her, for her to become a simple blank slate. It had felt like an eternity, but she would continue to hang here until the Purifier called for her.

Lowering her head, Lyka concentrated once more on the daggers drilling dual minute holes into the tensed muscles of her neck. The pain was welcome as it rushed back with a sudden flood, because she finally understood what the Purifier meant where he spoke of pain lessening other pains; if she concentrated on the throbbing of the arteries so near the blades of the daggers, then she would not feel the pain of her shames throughout her life. Pain was the way for her to purge herself of the fears, of the hated emotions, of the guilt over her broken oaths. That feeling in itself was an appreciated relief, a burden lifted from her tired shoulders.

Knowing that she still had a while left to go in this transformation, Lyka just relaxed as far as her restraints would allow her to. Her breathing slowed down until she appeared dead but for the little movement of her abdomen. Her senses slowly shut down; thoughts stopped bombarding her head until there was nothing as she turned off her third eye. At last, there was peace inside of her.

Only time and patience would be able to confirm whether or not she was worthy enough to become one of the Legion Vast, one of the Necromongers. Patience, she had cultivated from her stint on Aquila Major. Time, she could not tell how much more was left for her to bear. She only knew that it would take as long as it would take.


	6. Assimilation and Acceptance

"Child? Child?" Someone was shaking her shoulders; the blades pinched her throat as her neck moved with the motion of her shoulders. The puncture of the metals woke her from her silent reverie. Lyka slowly half-opened one of her eyes to behold the sight of the Purifier standing before her. His face was paler and drawn back from concern. "Tell me you have not passed into the UnderVerse unconverted."

There was a small pinch as the blades were loosened and lifted away from her neck. As the manacles released her wrists, she collapsed to the floor in a bundle of black clothes and tired flesh. Suddenly exhausted, she turned over. For a moment, she just laid there, rejoicing in the sudden feeling of freedom. To the obvious relief of the Purifier, she gingerly rolled on her knees and stood on wobbly knees, only to fall again to the cold steel of the floor.

Her senses slowly returned to her as the seconds passed by slowly. The cold of the steel floor against her fingers shocked her system into alertness. The light from the ceiling felt hot against her bared neck. She heard the steady beat of her heart, the rhythm of her pulse, the music of her breath as she began to breathe normally. The smell of the sweat and blood that had slowly stopped flowing out from her was a jarring reminder of the present. Twisting her sore neck slowly, Lyka stood up once more. This time, she grabbed a hold on the machine until her balance was returned to her.

"Do you remember who you are, convert?" The Purifier held his hands behind his back in a relaxed military stance, but his face was rolling with unexpected emotion: mostly worry. Did he truly care that much about a single convert among thousands?

"Yes, sir. My name is Lyka Divakar, formerly of Aquila Major by way of New Mecca, now a convert of the Necromongers." The lie fell out her lips with practiced ease, making sure to sever it with the hard-earned truth. Especially now, it was important not to reveal that she was a alpha Furyan, for who knew what they would do to her if she told them the truth? No, better to stick to her story and not show her true colors, yet...

"Have you understood the final lesson, Lyka Divakar?" The Purifier seemed to be resisting the effort to grab her and support her as she regained her bearings.

"Yes, my lord Purifier." Lyka bowed from the waist. While she was bent over, she collected her belongings at her feet; as her fingers grazed them, they did not instill the sense of security that they once brought about. Instead, they seemed cold against her skin as she tried to replace them in their proper places on her body.

Rising, she lifted her hands to the sides of her neck. The bleeding had stopped, but following an invisible straight line that started from the base of her ears, her fingers found two tender scars. They were like indentations in her skin; the scarred tissue grew into minuscule mounds that surrounded the dents.

"Every Necromonger bears those marks." The Purifier removed her hands from her neck, shaking his head. "You must not touch them; you will get used to their feeling in its due time."

Clearing his throat, the Purifier walked through the door. "You may go back to your quarters now, child. Join me in the main atrium in two hours' time. We will soon be leaving this world to convert more to our cause. The Lord Marshal has decreed it so." His voice echoed down the hallway as he walked away. For the second time in her new home of the Necropolis, Lyka was alone.

Gingerly, she walked down the hall to her quarters; her blood was slow to move from her legs, making her feel sluggish. She had to stop a few times to let the blood flow back to the rest of her body before limping back to her new quarters. As unadorned as they were, they seemed welcoming as she closed the door behind her. On her bed was a different set of clothes for her to change into; she would do that later. Her legs were slowly regained their use as she limped over to the basin. Being careful, she cleaned off the dried blood; it was tacky to the touch, but it cleaned off easily enough.

She peered at herself in the now-calm surface of the water. The only difference between herself and the past self, the one of Aquila Major, was that her eyes showed the residual glazing of the pain; other then the marks on her neck, she was the same. It was not a massive transformation, at least not on the physical level.

Lyka sprawled out on her bed for a moment, disregarding her new wardrobe for a minute. Doing a mental checklist, she realized that: her legs and arms were sore; her wrists were bruised from her fights with the manacles; her breathing was shallow and pant-like from the decrease of adrenaline that flooded her system; her neck was healing but still sore. All in all, she was going to be fine.

Something dug in her back. Turning over, Lyka found a hooded robe. Remembering the clothes underneath her, she slowly changed out of the sweat-and-blood-covered clothes that she had on. She donned the black long-sleeved loose tunic that extended into a point over the back of her hand and loose black pants that were provided for her. When she donned the robe, the hemline swished the floor as she walked. Around its waist was a belt of interwoven black cotton. Out of habit, she put her necklace back around her neck and the knife in the small of her back. It did not really feel right wearing them, but when was she last a Furyan that was worthy of wearing them in the first place? Thus prepared, she walked out to the atrium.

As she walked into the centre of the atrium, the Lord Marshal was lounging on his throne with the Purifier by his side. "Ah, our newest convert!" The Lord Marshal summoned her before his throne. Like a magnetic force pulling her towards him, she knelt at his feet.

"A question for you, convert." The Lord Marshal placed his fist under his chin as he pondered. "Why were you the only one on this planet to convert by their free will?"

She lowered her face to the floor. "I am not Aquilan, my lord. I… I hailed from New Mecca, but I was sent to Aquila Major as a child for studies. I converted to this faith because it held many parallels with my personal beliefs." Something inside her mind told her not to reveal the fact that she was Furyan. Anyway, he seemed pleased by the answer.

"Your classmates seem determined not to convert. They are turning out to be quite stubborn against accepting the Necromonger way. Perhaps some feel that you truly did betray them into following you down this path." He pointed to a void between two columns in the far left of the throne. Turning to stare, Lyka saw her classmates and nearly everyone from the square hooked up to the same machines that she was released from earlier, many of them with a painful expression on their faces. Sulakma was the very first person in one of the multitudinous rows, and she glared at Lyka with an angry stare so venomous that she probably did not even feel the pain from the barbs.

Lyka felt pity for her friend, sorry for the fact that she had to be forced into this faith. But the past was past; this faith was written as a part of her kismet. She looked back at the Lord Marshal. "My choices are my own, my lord. They made their own choices without foreseeing the consequences of joining the Necromongers."

The Lord Marshal stared down at her for a moment, trying to divine what she was thinking. "You are very understanding of the precepts of this faith, for a new convert. Not many are like you, child. What is your name?" The Lord Marshal nodded to the commander standing behind her. "Begin ascension protocol."

Lyka heard the marching of iron footsteps fading behind her, so she kept her gaze on the floor. "Lyka, Master. Lyka Divakar of New Mecca." At her answer, the Lord Marshal beckoned her closer.

He grabbed her chin to inspect her lowered face in a different light. "I sense that you are a great warrior. I want you to spend time with my captain, Vaako. Meet him tomorrow in the training room." The hair on the back of Lyka's neck rose; why was the Lord Marshal taking such care and time with her? When he was finished talking, he dismissed her. The Purifier gazed at her with slight suspicion as he stood behind his Lord Marshal.

With slow grace, she walked back to her quarters. Before she closed her door behind her, she felt the Necropolis lift from the ground. She stared out of her window as the stars came into view against the deep black of the cosmos. A small grin decorated her face as she shut the door and went to sleep…


	7. Of Visions and Duels

_Her mother came to her in her sleep again. This time, she appeared as who she was now in the present time, and not as a frightened four year old. Still, they met on the Field of Destiny on her home world; rows upon rows of graves that were not there before in her dreams littered her sight as she peered covertly around before turning to her mother. Shiira stared at her daughter with disgust and malice._

_"I had hoped more of you, daughter." She spat on the ground, her microbraids swirling as she paced. "How could you pledge yourself to this man? You don't deserve the title of alpha Furyan!" The ring of her slap echoed through the imaginary air._

_Her words pierced Lyka's heart, but she exhaled at the welcome pain. The burn of her mother's slap radiated calmness within her._

_"Mother, I have carried these pains for all my life: the loss of you, the loss of my father, the loss of my planet, the death of the little brother that I will never know. I was ashamed of these weaknesses, just as you taught me to be. But you never realized that trying to follow your requests would lead me down a path that now I can't get out of, so deeply is it ingrained into my being. Because you took me off Furya, I had to hide who I am from my classmates; they don't understand Furyans or our ways at all. You were the one that alienated me, not my actions. Don't you dare judge me, woman, because I choose to follow my faith!"_

_Shiira looked shocked, turning away from the undeniable logic of her daughter's words. "Lyka, your brother lives."_

_Now it was her turn to be dumbfounded. "What?" Lyka tried to digest that thought. "No, he died… on that day when all of the Furyan boy-children were slaughtered. He can't be alive." All that she had based her suffering on began to crumble beneath her feet. She knelt to the ground as she wrestled with this new knowledge._

_Shiira turned back towards her. "Your little brother lives, Lyka. I hid him away, just like I did you. He lives currently on a frozen planet, hiding from his crimes; he is the most wanted man in the universe, spending most of his time in and out of various maximum-security detention centres. You might have heard of him. I named him Richard, after your father. But he does not yet know he is Furyan, or that he has a family."_

_The dream version of her slipped into a vision within the astral plane. Her brother: tall and built like a bear, darkly tanned like the rest of his kind. A black muscle shirt covered the bricks of his torso; the loose cargo-pants covered the built legs. The eye-shine that was a part of all male alpha Furyans were covered behind welding goggles. His face was serious, looking around him as if scouting a room for exits; she could see years of abuse and cruelty labelled in his stealthy movements. The only thing missing from him was the hand print that labelled him as an alpha Furyan. Lyka's heart jumped: this was the same man that she had glimpses of before she was converted._

_At the visions and those words, Lyka fell forward to lay down at her mother's feet. "Please forgive me! I'm been so lost without you, Mother!" Tears fell readily from her eyes, the pain of a torn heart welcoming to soothe her. Shiira gathered her grown daughter in her arms to comfort her, rubbing her back like she used to do when she was a child. "I'm so sorry, Mother! I'm so sorry!" All of the pain that she thought had been purged from her during her conversion came back with a vengeance, threatening to kill her if not for her mother to guide her out of the abyss of loneliness and betrayal  
_

_"You must guard him when you meet in the near future; that is for certain, my child. You will meet again; the stars have foretold it. Do not fail me, my wayward daughter." Patting her weeping daughter's shoulder, Shiira whispered into Lyka's ear. "Know that I have never abandoned you, no matter how difficult your path became. You were never lost, and you shall become worthy in your heart again to be called alpha Furyan."_

_With that, Shiira began to dissipate into grey fog. This time, Lyka bowed her head as she too transformed into the ethereal fog that always ended her dreams…_

_

* * *

_

Lyka opened her eyes. A single tear fell down her face as she remembered the forgiveness of her mother, the sting of her anger. Her little brother was alive after all; a portion of her sorrow was for naught.

As she sat up slowly from her prone position, she realized something: there was no more sorrow in her heart. Everything that she once felt: regret, sorrow, fear… none of it resided in her heart anymore. It had happened after the conversion, but now her heart was filled with something else in the place of the catharsis' emptiness: purpose.

Her mother had assured that she was not lost off her path. Confidence filled her as she dressed for the Lord Marshal's request, making sure to tie off her hair with a piece of string from her pockets. She grinned as the black loose tunic and pants belied the strength of her frame. She would enjoy a good bout as she strapped her blade to her forearm. Out of a wish of some routine, she strapped her new hand-and-half sword to her side; she would require something to duel with.

She needed no directions to the training room; she needed only to follow the sound of men grunting and the clashing of swords. Her bare feet made no sound as she padded her way at a gentle jog through the darkness to her destination.

Ten men were practicing today. Four of them were sitting on the benches bordering the circumference of the room, watching the other six fight each other with blades and with fists. Bared swords laid in their laps, polishing cloths were forgotten in their hands as they observed their comrades. There were no cheering, no boisterous encouragement between friends and brothers-in-arm.

Lyka stopped at the doorway as she watched the bout. One man in the midst of the group was fighting the other five; all of them were shirtless as the sweat dripped from their brows. Impressive odds; she slid over to an unoccupied bench. Using only a dulled hand-and-half sword, the man in the middle disarmed four of his combatants with only his hands and dealt a blow to consider them dead. The last man rushed him in a final charge, but the lone combatant simply stuck his foot out and slammed the flat of his blade into the shoulders of the fallen man.

At last, the duel was over. The lone combatant walked to the side to get a drink. He was an odd specimen of a Necromonger. The paleness of his skin was contrasted with the muscled frame of someone who would have spent his life outdoors as a labourer. Sweat dribbled down the length of his bare back only to be absorbed by the black pants that were loosely tied to his waist. His midnight hair was growing in an unusual roach style: unshaven and messily divided into small braids in the middle, roughly shaved on the sides to shorten them. However, it was his eyes that drew her; a deep brown, they took in everything that someone else might have missed. Warrior's eyes.

Taking a breath, she launched herself off the bench and over to the lone combatant. Moving silently, none of the others even noticed her.

"What is it?" Without even turning around, the man took a swig of water and stared at the wall in front of him. At this point, the others noticed her; some of them began to chortle at the thought of a girl in their training room. One of them looked at her intently, before speaking to the others; whatever he said, the eight others lost their ability to speak, so great was their shock.

"The Lord Marshal told me to come down here, to train with his captain Vaako." At the mention of the Lord Marshal, the lone combatant turned around to meet her. Not afraid, she kept her eyes on his, never looking away.

"Aye. So you're the one?" Placing the water bottle back down on the bench, he peered up and down the length of her, taking in her abilities with a single glance. "Vaako. So, the Lord Marshal told me to train you. Well, convert, let's see what you got."

Amidst the muffled conversations of the soldiers, Lyka unsheathed her sword and stood in the centre of the ring. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the men on the benches making bets between them on the outcome of the fight; it was obvious that they favoured the seasoned captain over the two day old convert. Vaako, now refreshed from his previous fight, rolled his shoulder and tossed his own sword- not the dulled practice sword he was just using, but a full arm-length sword with a wicked edge- from hand to hand.

Without a word, the fight began when Vaako swung his sword above his head with the obvious intent to cleave her skull in two. Lyka ducked and slid aside, aiming a sliding kick for his kneecaps with the heel of her foot. Vaako deflected her leg with a swing of his own legs, jumping out of the way. He was at an advantage with her on the ground and him with his sword at the ready. Lyka thanked Master Feng for his endless lessons and the thousands of bruises that she received by his hand, pounding into her the need for quick movement and to never drop her weapon or her guard. Getting to her feet with a simple jump, she made a swipe at his jawbone with the very tip of her blade. It was a foolish move, but it showed Vaako that she was worthy of his fullest.

A small scratch appeared on Vaako's cheek, a minute river of bright crimson on a pale skin. He never noticed it, but his concentration increased. This girl was a challenge; never before had he seen such skill in a new convert. His grip on his sword shifted; for a moment, they just circled one another, trying to sense for a potential weakness in the other.

Lyka made the offensive this time, swinging her sword in her two-handed grip and using the force of her arms and the pommel of the sword to injure him further. Vaako seemed shocked as he stumbled to defend her blows; never before had he seen a hand-to-hand combat style like this. As a blow of luck, she levied her weight into a jump to increase the potential of her final blow, making it seem like she was falling forward as well; forcing him onto his back, the soldiers around them gasped and stood to their feet.

Lyka's blade rested against the side of his throat, its edge barely kissing the thin layer of skin that covered the visibly beating vessels underneath it. In the midst of the scuffle, she withdrew the dagger which now rested in the hollow of his throat with its tip aimed directly for the centre of his voice box. Lyka herself straddled him around his waist, her knees pinning his arms on the ground.

"Well, well, well." Lyka let him up, but she still held her weapons at the ready. This man was good; why else would the Lord Marshal make him a captain of the Legion? Yet she had beaten him in a single bout. Was he just tired? Still, she just did not want to let her guard down.

Vaako remained on the ground, just observing her before getting up himself. Shallow pants lifted his torso in a way that was not unattractive. "The Lord Marshal was right. You do have skills." He shook his head, waving his hand at her. "You can put your weapons down, child. Our duel is over."

Still overtly cautious, Lyka relaxed her grip ever so slightly. Her heart was continuing to race at breakneck speed, but she kept her breathing at a normal pace. Keeping her eyes on Vaako, she watched him drink from the same bottle as before.

"Relax, child." Vaako stared at her intently. "Well, there's not much that I can teach you. I'll report to the Lord Marshal to consider you for a captaincy next time there's need." He sat down on the bench heavily. "Where'd you learn to fight like that, convert?"

"On Aquila Major, at the university, Captain. I learned martial arts since I was six until I achieved the highest master rank at twenty, and then practicing every day for ten years now. I began forging my own blades and learning to use them at six as well." Lyka, feeling more at ease, sheathed her weapons. Her dagger continued to pulsate with fight-fury against the heated skin of her back.

"You're from the recently purged one, aren't you?" He cocked his head to one side as he continued to inspect her from the corner of his eye. A little stream of sweat dribbled down from his temple.

"Purged one, Captain?" At this, Lyka was confused. She was from Aquila Major, which was still a thriving planet the last time she checked. Maybe something happened while she locked in the painful throes of the gauntlet, aware of nothing but her anguish. A shiver crept around her neck where her newly-made marks were displayed, but she ignored the sudden urge to rub her hand on them.

"After any planet that we conquer has supplied us with as many converts as it can, we cleanse it of all life. Afterwards, it can become a new home for the residents of UnderVerse. It is a reward for a life of service: obedience without question, loyalty 'til UnderVerse come. That is the mantra of service for all Necromongers, soldier or not."

Lyka nodded her head, but her mind began to race. That was why Sulakma was still so angry at her, thinking that she might have been the catalyst that had destroyed her home! Her planet was cleansed after the Necropolis flew into the galaxy once again. No one was left in the planet that housed her since her exile from Furya. What had happened to Darien, to Willai? She could feel her heart ache once more at the loss of more people dear to her heart, people who had taught her since her coming to this world.

A question stirred in the back of her consciousness. What if this was the fate of Furya? Furya was purged of all of its young males, but its women were left unharmed to mourn…

Lyka's thoughts were interrupted as the wall began to move. A small panel was coming down, but it was what was on it was the disturbing part. A human- at least, it looked like a human- writhed under a sheer grey sheet. Its face was so deformed, so aged. Its eyes were hollow, but it had no voice. A small golden bowl stood by its head, a black substance filled to its brim.

Vaako walked towards it, as if it was the most normal thing to happen. Leaning over it, he began a conversation with it. Barely hearing it, she thought it- whatever it was- sounded rather metallic and raspy in nature, as though it was one entity with the thoughts of many. The other soldiers began to disperse back to their quarters, their practice for the day completed. Only Lyka stuck around; rooted to the spot, she was so curious about the thing in the wall, but she had never seen anything like that ever before.

Nodding, Vaako pressed a button in the stone wall; the creature receded back into its place. Lyka held back her thoughts of disgust at the sight of this creature.

"Captain, what was that thing?" Lyka was partly curious, but her voice still held its disgusted tinge from her reaction at the new creature. Vaako seemed unperturbed.

"It's a Quasi-Dead, a lesser one anyway. They were once converts long ago, but they swore off all food and drink in order to truly experience the faith. It's the way we communicate between ships and between people in the Necropolis. Lyka, the Purifier wishes to see you later, back in the atrium."

Nodding, Lyka returned to her room. Toweling off the sweat from the match, Lyka noticed something on her bed that was not there before. Changing into a new set of clothes, she inspected it. It was a simple silver chain, bearing a pendant in the form of one of the four faces that decorated the war helmet of the Lord Marshal. Not knowing what quite to do with it, she placed it in the pocket of her pants. Securing the hooded robe around her neck and feeling the comfort of its weight, she walked outside once more.

Lyka travelled back into the dimmed light of the atrium. Only a few Necromongers walked through this place at this time of day; otherwise this entire area would have been full of people discussing and debating, as this served as the Necromonger version of a common area. The Purifier was waiting by one of the statues. His hands were clasped behind his back, just craning his head to stare up at the form of the scourged man.

"Do you know who this is, convert?" The Purifier's voice was distant, but Lyka sensed that he was tired. Even though he knew her name from the conclusion of the gauntlet, he still chose to call her 'convert', and she wondered why, although she would never ask him that to his face.

"No, my lord." Lyka did not know his name even now, so she simply called him that out of an ingrained behaviour of respect.

"Dispense with the titles, Lyka. I am only a Purifier." For a moment, his gaze shot a glare at her that ordered her into her already state of silence. "This is Baylock, the fourth Lord Marshal. He was the leader of our forces at the time of the battle between Necromonger and Carthadox. He was the first to utilize the Quasi-Dead; through them, we were able to win the war and gain many new converts to the cause."

The Purifier stood away from the statue. "Lyka, you were on of the few converts who understood both the pains of this 'verse and the quintessential way of the Necromonger. I have spoken to Lord Marshal Zhylaw and he has agreed to allow me to train you as a Purifier."

At this, Lyka spoke nothing. This was a great honour given to her, sensing that it was not one granted for many newly-formed converts. However, she had an ulterior mission from her mother: to keep watch over her brother. Her thoughts churned: what better place for her to find any specific person in this 'verse then in the upper echelons of the Necromongers?

She took her time in answering, even thought her mind was already made up, simply to build the suspense of the moment. As if she finally came to a conclusion and not when she decided that minutes ago, she nodded her head slowly. "I wish not to contravene the wishes of the Lord Marshal. Obedience without question, loyalty 'til UnderVerse come," she echoed the words of Vaako. "What is needed?"

The Purifier turned away, staring instead back at the statue. "You will fast in silence for the next week, before returning to the gauntlet for two days in their entirety. Afterwards, if you survive, you may don the pendant that was given to you earlier today. In essence, you will be my second-in-command; when I reach my due time, then you will lead the conversions that join our forces on every planet until in turn it is your due time."

With no more words lefty for him to say, the Purifier led her back to her room. His pale eyes watched her as she removed the cloak and the pendant from her pocket and lay down on her bed; always attentive to details, he watched as she stretched out on the bed and closed her eyes.

He had been leader of the Purifiers for over forty years now and he was tired. He had earned his epaulets and his status from the numbers that he had converted successfully: for every ten individual successful conversions, fifteen at the least would die rather then to accept this faith. Although he was proud to be a Necromonger, he was tired of the constant loss of life in the current Lord Marshal's reign. He could not compare it to other formerly reigning Lord Marshals, but somehow he could intuit that the reign of Zhylaw was going to end in a way that was even more blood-stained then that of Baylock the Brutal.

He pressed his hand against the heat of his heart as he observed his newest convert enter a seemingly deep trance, her breathing slow and deep; it seemed almost too easy for her, as if this was a simple practice for her, when other Purifiers before her had to take almost an hour to completely enter the trance and stay there, to clear their minds of all distractions around them. His eyes watched the length of her body release the tension that it unknowingly held and relax into the recesses of the blankets underneath her.

When she was so deep into the trance that he was sure she would not awaken, he approached her side quietly. Something bothered him about this particular convert. When he saw a glimpse of her fighting against Vaako in the duelling arena, an old emotion that he kept tamped down flared up in new fervour: the want to pick up a blade and fight in the duel himself. His hand moved closer to her heart.

Her eyes snapped open with the simple presence of his hand. "Is something wrong, Purifier?" Her gaze was so innocent, so trusting, that he shook his head, shaking away the clinging cobwebs of doubts from his mind.

"Nothing, Lyka Divakar. Nothing's wrong." Her name sounded foreign on his thick tongue as he slid outside of her door. He panted from the adrenaline pumping in his system from the jolt. His suspicions were disproved: no Furyan could get out of a trance that quickly and be coherent.

When he returned to his personal quarters, he stood before the mirror. Stripping off the jacket and tunic of his office, he stared at the handprint glowing on his heart. He had failed and accepted it a long time ago. He never wanted to be an alpha Furyan, so he chose not to act like one. Time would only tell if his actions were true…


	8. Through the Gauntlet, Once More

_Her mother came to her once more, again in the throes of her trance. "My child, by now you must now comprehend and understand the events that lead to the fate of our people thirty years ago." She stared across the field at the multitude of graves and headstones that stood their vigil over the ones who died, obviously keeping eminent tears off her face._

_Lyka nodded, her haunted gaze also focused at the tops of the numberless tombstones. After her mother's visit the week before and all through her trance, she kept receiving visions of the past, particularly the death of the Furyan children. The one person that kept showing up was the Lord Marshal leading the charge as he smiled smugly at the destruction of his foes. "It was the man to whom I have swore allegiance to, Lord Marshal Zhylaw. He feared something of this planet and so destroyed our only hope of a future: all young male Furyans, alpha or not. Every child born that year or the year before was killed; some were even strangled with their birth cords as their mothers were held captive with swords to their necks, so new into the world were they. Also culled were the boys from ages two to twenty, to remove any trace of a future male generation to renew our race." _

_Purposefully her voice was monotonous to keep her from screaming in agony. Her vision while she was in a trance proved correct always, never had they misled her before. This was the first time that she wished that it was wrong, that she wished it was all a giant mistake. She had sworn herself to the man who attempted to kill her little brother, and who had most likely killed her father, while taking away the hope of her nation without a single ill thought except now that he was immune to his fears: that was completely unacceptable. _

_Shiira nodded. "That was the reason for my initial disgust. You had joined yourself to the man who had destroyed everything that we had built, everything that we had hoped for in the future. At least, now you know and understand the errors of that decision and wish to aid me in avenging our people." Her tone was serene, but even still a single tear fell down her peerless face. _

_Lyka sighed and looked over the graves before turning to her mother. "Mother, the Purifier has chosen me to become one of his ranks. I will be able to keep an eye out for Richard as we travel through his verse. I know now my error in choosing this way, but I still have to pretend as though I am devout. Until I find Richard, I must maintain this guise. I might be forced to do terrible things before I meet up with Richard, and I need to know that you will forgive me of them in the end." Lyka placed her hand on her mother's shoulder, a daughter trying to help her mother._

_"Do not worry, Lyka. You will not have that much time left before you see him. It is nearly time for the two of you to meet for the first time, Lyka. Be on the watch for him, for he will not trust you initially." Shiira walked forward into the mist, her clothes slowly becoming one with the air. "My blessings upon the both of you, my children."_

_Lyka simply lowered her head. At the end of this week, it would be time for her ordeal through fire and ice to begin. After this, there was no going back.  
_

_

* * *

_

The Purifier was gently shaking her shoulders to awake her from the depths of her trance. Her body was sluggish, slow to react to the change. The week had seemed to take forever. Her trances were quiet: no visions other than the ones that replayed the fate of Furya, no other premonitions with her mother. Only the occasional sips of water that were forced past her lips for her to swallow kept her in this world and out of permanent residence on the astral plane. No food for that long a time had left her languid, her body so relaxed. She could not remember the last time that she felt this way: surely it was back on Furya, for never had she felt like this on Aquila Major.

The Purifier's face was drawn tight with concern. "It's time, convert." His voice had gone formal, no longer addressing her by her name as he did a few times before this. It was not odd, just cold coming from him. Still, she understood the reason for it: this was the hardest trial any Necromonger could go through, some not even making it through alive or sane. She was only a week and a half old, by Necromonger consideration, and she was already going through the trials once again. If she was as promised as he and the Lord Marshal assumed she was, it would be a great loss for both of them indeed if she died before her due time in this second run-through of the gauntlet.

He motioned to the opened door, her tired gaze following the very tips of his fingers. Vaako was standing beyond the threshold and by her bedside, regal in his full armour and his helmet tucked under his arm. Not a word was spoken by anyone as they each grabbed one of her arms at the shoulder joint and lifted her off the bed like an invalid.

The feeling of her feet off the ground made her weak, her head feel dizzy as it lolled to one side. Lyka shook her head as they tried to carry her out of the room. Shaking her head, she regained her balance and began to walk on her own back to the chamber, stumbling slightly as the circulation came back to her legs in painfully slow increments. Not surprised at the conviction of her pride, the Purifier and Vaako followed her in case she fell down from her prolonged state of weakness. That proved to be unnecessary.

Again, she arrived at the room of the gauntlet, the very same in which she had been tested in before. This time, she knew the procedure. Before the manacles captured her wrists, she removed her blade and necklace and placed them reverently on the table. Walking the few paces to the base of the machine, she waited to be restrained. This time around, there was no fear in her eyes or tears that threaten to break her composure.

Vaako stood at the threshold, not daring to enter the room that held so many memories of a past life. "We will be arriving at the Coalsack system in a half hour. My regiment will lead the ground forces, Purifier. This will bring many new converts to our cause." He gazed over at Lyka for the briefest of moments, like a father making sure that his child was safely tucked in bed at night. Then he marched down the hallways, just another one of the many cogs in the machine that was Necroism.

Without a word, the Purifier attached his newest protégé to the machine. Again, the manacles snapped around her wrists, her elbows bent over the support braces and her feet lifted off the ground. As the blades were lowered a second time, the Purifier took the proper time to align them with her existing scars.

Before forcing the blades into her scars, the Purifier stole a final look at his protégé and future second-in-command to-be. She was so calm, her face a mask of relaxed sereneness. Only her hands, balled into fists so tight her knuckles were white, gave away any sign of her fear. They met each other and stared into their eyes. Without words, the Purifier asked again if she was sure that this was what she wanted. For her answer, Lyka just nodded.

No words of comfort were exchanged this time, no reassurances. The blades snapped into place. Lyka gave a hiss of pain as the blades fit into her scars, as the blood began to drip again down her neck. His duty done, The Purifier forced himself to walk out of the room and lock the door behind him, not allowing himself to second guess the joint decision of the Lord Marshal and himself. Lyka would have to go through this alone, once again. This was her test, and only she alone would bear its tribulation...


	9. Another Transformation

The blades dug into her neck, but they were not as painful as the first time when she had experienced them, not nearly as painful as she expected them to be. Lyka hung her head, forcing her body to relax. She was going to be in this machine for two days, with no food or water. It was not going to be likely that she was going to be able to sleep like this.

The only thing left for her was to return to her trance. The darkness was welcoming to a once-tortured psyche like hers, to help her slow her mind until it stopped, but in her present state of mind, the darkness served only to remind her that the light was more enjoyable to dwell in. However, in the light were people to constantly wear away at her control, forcing her to hide deep within a guise of a former being that she could have been were she not Furyan. The solitariness of it was soothing: no thoughts to be barraged against her already tired mind. A phase came into her mind as she went through her newest thought process: _so now it's back to the brightness, and everything I hate... I wonder if she'll be there._ Lyka blinked her eyes several times and brought herself out of that. Where had that come from?

The dichotomy of it all, light versus darkness, consumed her mind and took her focus away from the pain. If she survived this, her newest challenge, then she would become the second most powerful Purifier in the Necromonger ranks. It would become her duty to shepherd people away from the light, from their families and friends, and allow them to experience Necroism even for a short time. She herself associated the light with her mother, the person who set her straight after her many mistakes. Would she have the strength of conviction to go through with this, even if she herself was no longer a believer of this twisted perversion of a faith?

Six hours passed as she stopped the new barrage of thought and counted her breaths to pass the time. The pain was so minimal, so inexistent; this was not even a trial to bear. She had no idea what the Purifier had meant when he said that this was a trial to make her fit for his status, to become one of his group, one of the converters. He probably expected her to be weeping for this to stop. Going through the gauntlet once was enough to turn people insane; what would going through it a second time voluntarily do to her?

A conscious thought not of her making tugged at her mind, even though her eyes were closed and her mind was blank. It was a familiar feeling; it meant that she was no longer alone. She felt an ethereal hand resting ever so slightly on the crown of her head. That slightest touch made her grin, for it -both the touch and the gesture- were familiar to her. Opening her eyes a touch, she could barely make out the phantom figure before her.

Shiira stood before her, her hand now on her daughter's shoulder; no longer dressed as the priestess and seer, she wore the rough clothes of the mountain life: snug undyed sweatpants underneath rough rawhide boots; a loose long-sleeved shirt reaching past her wrists and half covering her wrapped hands; no jewellery but the same falcon necklace that Lyka herself would have been wearing except for the trial; her Furyan dagger was barely visible, tucked into the top of her pants. No word was spoken, no words needed to be spoken. She was there to guide her daughter through this second ordeal, to make sure that she was not alone during this new test of her character.

Both eyes now opened fully, Lyka gazed up at her mother. This version of her mother was different than the ones of her visions. Grey hair shot its way through the midnight microbraids of her temple. Wrinkles appeared around her eyes and mouth that were not present during her last visions.

"Are you truly here, Mother, or is this one of your visions for me?" Her neck grew sore so she let her head drop. Her hair had loosened from the horsetail, her microbraids shadowing her face. The pain was less than the time before, as she could still speak and think coherently.

"Daughter, this is one of your visions, but this time I will stay with you until the time of your trial is completed. Did you ever doubt that I was never there for you?" Shiira's fingers lifted her daughter's chin into view.

"Only when I went through this trial before, when I believed that you were long dead and far away on Furya." In a situation like this, it seemed blasphemous to smile, but smile she did. Nothing, not even the slightest tinge of pain could make her unhappy, now that her mother was here to watch over her.

The apparition of Shiira paced around the room. "How is it that you can stand to stay in such a room?" Her hand rubbed against the cold metal, shuddering as she walked in a little circle. "There is so little room in here. How can you not go mad?"

"Easily, Mother: by pretending that I'm in an open field back home or even in the forests of Aquila Major. Pretend that I'm somewhere with space, with no boundaries. However, Mother, there are not very many open places left to retreat to, so I must needs make do." Lyka shook her head as little as she could to not aggravate the spikes burrowing into the tightened tendons of her neck, but she couldn't help but grimace.

Shiira rushed to her daughter's side. "How much does it hurt?" Her hands gently touched the spikes burying into her progeny's neck.

Lyka stared up through her eyebrows. "The pain comes and goes, Mother. The point of this lesson is to prove that one pain can lessen another. This first time around, this cleansed me of the loss of you and Papa and the person that everyone thought I was. Sulakma will never forgive me, because she believes that I betrayed her when I sided with the Necromongers. Truth be told, I was never one of them. I was there because of notions beyond my grasp, and I had no idea of what to do except to follow whatever opportunities passed me by and never show what I felt." She chuckled to herself once. "I guess that these trials were a good way for me to get a fresh start, after all."

Shiira backed away to the wall, sitting down on the floor as she nodded. "You have proved yourself worthy, child. Only a few have come far enough to be tested time and time again for the conviction of their beliefs. Only a few have been able to truly call themselves Furyan, to understand what we are to the core of their very being." As she sat down tailor-style against the cold metal, she exhaled.

A shiver of sweat crept down Lyka's spine as an unexpected cold breeze flew through the room. "Mother, if it is you causing the wind to flare, I must ask you to stop. It hurts, Mama." Her mother's eyes were closed as the wind grew in speed, rustling her clothes as they flew in the air.

A fire began to burn in her head, concentrating on her third eye. Pain blossomed in her neck as she struggled against the burning sensation, fruitless though it was with the manacles on her wrists and the blades in her throat. Blood ran anew from the scars on her neck, making her skin feel sticky as it dried instantly against the growing heat of her skin.

At the culmination of the fire and air as it grew into a blazing inferno that engulfed her soul in the midst of a tornado, Lyka tried to scream and found that she could not. It was as if her voice refused to obey her. Her skin was burning and splitting open and yet there was no physical mark. Her chest heaved and she tried to vomit but nothing would come; she hadn't eaten in a week. Her lungs crackled with the heat of the blaze, rendering her unable to breath. She was helpless to stop the rampage, and yet no tears would comes from her eyes to soothe away some of the pain.

Just as gradually as the internal blaze began, it stopped. The fire slowly put itself out inch by excruciating inch. When it was done, Lyka hung from the machine, panting as her breath refused to come. Her eyes closed, trying to preserve the remnants of self-control. She reached into herself to pull that shield over herself, but there was no shield to grab.

"I am sorry for all of the pain that I have caused you over your life, Lyka. This is the last time, I promise." Lyka opened her eyes, but her vision was blurred. Something clicked in the back of her mind, something that she needed to experiment with.

She lifted her exhausted neck to stare into the light above her, not caring if her scars began to bleed anew. All she could see was blindness; the light took away her sight. Lowering her head back down to the dark floor, she could begin to make out the shapes as the light, or lack there of, reflected off of it.

Shiira stood up once more, this time materializing a mirror for her daughter to stare at herself in utter amazement. Shock had no place in her face as Lyka peered into the face before her in the mirror. It was her face, but it was also different. Her face was gaunter, made to seem even more severely shaped by the pure white braids that sprouted from her temples. Other than that, not much else had changed. However, it was her eyes that were the most shocking of her newly beheld transformation.

Her once golden hawk's eyes were covered over by a silvery coat. This was eye-shine, seen in only a very few alpha Furyans, most of them male. This was a gift that allowed them to see with perfect clarity in the dark; however, they were blind in the sun unless they glanced at the world with goggles to protect them.

"This is your true form. This is truly what it is meant to be alpha Furyan." Lyka was only half listening to her mother's words, instead gazing at the elusive mirror before her. All she could think of how she was going to explain the eye-shine to the Purifier when he came to free her in a day. Even just as she was thinking of it, the eye-shine dissolved into the normal color of her eyes. That would prove a useful trait, indeed.

"Daughter, you will discover that your reflexes are faster, and your rage will become able to come under more control." Lyka disrupted her gaze from the mirror to realize that her mother's lips were not moving as she heard her words.

_"Yes, daughter." _Shiira nodded her head with a slight smile. _"You can also listen in on the thoughts of others without them knowing; perhaps in time, you may learn to control the thoughts of others in perform your will. You and I are the only ones left of our line that had this ability and the ability to pass it on to any female children that we might have." _

_"But Mother, aren't you not as young as you used to be to be having any more children after Richard? After all, it's being nearly thirty years since you bore him."_ Lyka tilted her own head in question, ignoring the further probing of the blades into the tender muscles of her neck.

_"That does not matter, Lyka. The only goal that you must fulfill is to keep your eye on Richard. It will not be long now until he comes into your sight." _Shiira nodded her head as she kissed Lyka on her lowered forehead. _"As you come into your own, I have left a present for you in your room. It has been passed down by every female in our line; now, it is your turn to bear it."_ The grey mist began to take over her as she walked backwards towards the door.

There was nothing left to do, so Lyka hung her head again and waited. The trance that she had perfected became a safe haven for her until the end of the trial. She willed away all the errant thoughts that might have barraged her mind once more as she grappled with her newfound abilities; for now, the quiet around her would serve nicely to calm her. The Purifier would come soon enough, and not before that; he would come at the due time…


	10. A New Purifier

The Purifier exhaled heavily as he reached the door to the gauntlet. This was his only hope of maintaining a steady flow of converts and constantly bolstering the ever fluctuating numbers of Necromongers, and that was by making more Purifiers. Maybe he had acted prematurely on this one; after all, Lyka Divakar was only a convert for two days before being chosen for this trial. However, he had to get at her quickly before the Lord Marshal deemed her worthy to serve only as a captain in his vast army. Instead, she was to become his second-in-command for her obvious commitment to the path, but only if she survived.

Unlocking the door, he gasped at the sight before him. Lyka was still hanging patiently, not even in a trance; she must have awoken when she heard the door open. She was alert and staring at him with the look of someone at ease in her current situation, no matter how precarious it might become with a single movement. Crimson drops of blood ran dripping down her neck; the blade tips were still embedded in the scars. There was no hope of dislodging them without causing death, one of the main concerns of the original Purifiers when they created this machine to test their converts to ascertain worthiness of the Necromonger title. Lyka, however, had changed.

Her head raised, she looked at him expectantly. At her temples, the three braids that grew from them were pure white, a dazzling contrast to the rest of her pitch-black locks. Her face was gaunter. Was it a delayed result of the fasting, maybe? Was her face tanner, or in this light was it paler? Indeed, she had changed drastically, more so than anyone before who had undertaken this second conversion.

"Convert, have you survived?" The words were ceremonial, but in this case they were a moot point.

"Yes, my lord Purifier." Her voice was deeper somehow, more mellow and less pained.

"You have now gained the rank of Purifier." With that, he wasted no time in withdrawing the blades from her throat. She gasped ever so slightly at the spark of pain before making her face smooth of emotions again. Unlocking the manacles quickly, he made ready to catch her.

Without his help, Lyka fell the short distance to the floor and landed on her feet. He could smell the musky scent of the sweat that had soaked into her tunic, underlaid with a bare hint of the metallic smell of blood. Shaking her head slightly, she stood up without any trouble. Her face was clear of any signs of pain.

"My lord Purifier, how goes the campaign while I was occupied?" She seemed so calm, so rational. She stood on her feet without having the need to lean on anything, her hands grasped behind her back. This confused the Purifier but he never let it show in his own body language.

"The Coalsack systems have brought our cause six million new possible converts, and the planets were purged yesterday. We are now on our way to the Helion systems, a much more bountiful system with more than enough converts to bolster our ranks. We should arrive within a month."

Lyka nodded her head. "Very good. May I please return to my quarters?" Without waiting for his permission, she turned around to the table against the wall and placed her belongings back on her person. He could swear that he heard her sigh with relief as the straps of the dagger went back around her forearm, the necklace clasped safely back around her damaged neck.

The Purifier, stunned into silence at the almost miraculous recovery of this convert, nodded his head also. "Oh, Lyka." This was the first time that he had spoken her name since before the ritual fast, and it caught her attention as she reached the open doorway.

"There will be a ceremony to officially give you the rank of my second-in-command later in the day. Come to the atrium in two hours time. The Lord Marshal will be presiding over it; it means a great deal to him as to whom his chosen Purifiers are. The clothes that you are to wear are in your quarters already." When he had finished, Lyka walked without any sign of weakness back to her quarters.

Standing alone in the room, the Purifier was still in shock. How could she have done that, been able to walk without aid or stand without trouble? She should not have been able to even talk without pain. The combination of the fasting and the psychological effects of the machine should have drained off her energy, and yet she was walking as if neither of them had occurred at all. Something was different with this convert, and even if she was not a Furyan, he intended to find out what.

* * *

When the door to her quarters locked behind her, Lyka breathed a sign of relief. She had passed the test with the Purifier, now she just had to keep up this masquerade until she had found Richard and then she would be free.

Her quarters were eerily quiet as she removed her ritual clothing. Sweat had poured off her in rivulets and had soaked into her clothes, leaving them stiff. She intended to throw them out as soon as she could; they were no longer fit to wear, not even worthy for use as cleaning rags. Standing in her room mother-naked, she slowly nibbled from the plate that was delivered to her desk: apple slices, cold chicken, and a piece of dry bread; there was also a cup of tea, which she drank down greedily, followed by another glass of water after that. Her stomach accepted the overdue nourishment, adding to her depleted stores of energy

Adjusting her eyes to the light in the room, she found the shower for her to wash in. Taking the time to luxuriate underneath the hot sprays against her sore back, she washed the grime and the tears, most importantly the sweat, from her lithe figure. The hot water beat against all of the knots that had formed from that awful position that she maintained, serving to make her purr in utter happiness.

Her hair dripping without care on the floor, Lyka wrapped a towel around her waist as she found the clothes that the Purifier referred to, since that was all that her closet was filled with now: leather military-style jackets edged with synthetic gold thread, black leather pants, black tunics, black knee-high boots. From one stand by the door of her closet were a set of black belts. A sombre wardrobe, nothing but the gold trim of her jackets in color.

Donning the tunic and pants first, she started when there was a knock on her door. Disturbed at who would want to visit her so close to the ceremony when she should be spending it in solitude, she opened it to inspect the visitor.

A women of stunning beauty filled her threshold. Against her thin frame was a gown of shimmering silver, a simple long-sleeved sheath that played off the dark tan of her skin. Her black hair was done up in a bun at the back of her neck. But it was her face that drew people in. Her eyes glowed with the caress of power, aided by some kind of elusive eyeliner underneath it. Her mouth was made for both kissing and for talking her way out of trouble and into getting her own way.

"You must be the newest Purifier." The woman took a step towards her, filling the space between them. "I am Dame Vaako, and my husband seems to count you among his friends. It is strange, indeed," as she picked at her immaculate fingernails, "that a week and a half old convert fledging could earn the respectful friendship of the most loyal of captains amidst the ground forces, and be chosen by the Lord Marshal himself to become his newest Purifer." Her deep brown eyes turned towards her in a friendly glare.

Lyka knew that this was a woman not to be meddled with. She enjoyed the feel of the power that her husband afforded her, but she wanted more, feeling that somehow she had earned it. She was a snake, camouflaged among the Necromongers but with the ability to strike out at anyone who threatened the basis of her power.

"Dame Vaako," she stood away from the door to sit on her bed but did not invite her unwanted guest into her quarters. "I have no intention of using your husband to gain power. I was just as surprised as many of you must have been when the Purifier chose me as his second-in-command. But I will not allow you to come into my quarters and accuse me of power-mongering."

"Why, I have no idea how what you are insinuating, Lyka of Aquila Major, or is it of New Mecca? I just came with the request of my husband to give you your marks, now that you are truly one of us Necromongers." From behind her back she pulled out a tool that looked extraordinarily similar to a soldering iron.

Following Lyka's incredulous gaze, Dame Vaako laughed. "Relax, child. Every woman among the Necromongers has these marks underneath her eyes." Her eyeliner was not eyeliner after all, but a charcoal black burn that outlined her lower and upper eyelids.

Like the snake that her personality suggested, she walked with a single stride to sit down beside Lyka. "Now don't move." Grabbing Lyka by the chin, she pressed the iron against the lower lash line. The burn was not bad, but it was annoying. Lyka forced herself to sit still as Dame Vaako patiently burned the rest of her lower and her upper lid.

"There, now that was not that bad, was it?" That loaded question stung her pride as Lyka all but shoved herself off her own bed to get away from Vaako's advances. Yet, she forced herself not to touch the marks around her eyes. They felt foreign, and yet she could almost feel that they belonged to her face, that among the many women who bore them, they made her unique among the flock.

"Get out, Dame Vaako. Consider yourself unwelcome in my room. Now please remove yourself before I do it for you." Her Furyan rage almost escaped her now solid control; already it was decorating the edge of her voice. She had to grind her teeth before a curse came to her tongue that would have been most unladylike.

Laughing out loud, the lady obliged her as she sauntered out. Lyka slammed the door behind her. Resting her back against the door, she forced herself to take several breaths before standing straight. Curiosity beat her control, however, as she walked over to her mirror.

Her face was the same, but her eyes seemed more exotic. The black burns from the iron made her eyes seem elongated. The lines came into at the corner of her eyes in a point. It made her face more narrow, more gaunt. It suited her, it suited her very well.

Shrugging her shoulders, Lyka donned her boots and the jacket. She looked at the mirror. The paramilitary look suited her: the knee length jacket with its gold trim contrasted well with the rugged black leather boots. The tunic and pants, black as night, were simple, just her style. These clothes felt right on her. Gathering one of the combs that she had taken with her from Aquila Major, she pulled back her black braids into a horsetail. By the time that she was ready, the ceremony was about to begin in ten minutes. Grabbing the pendant from her desk and placing it in the jacket pocket, she walked out of her room with new purpose.


	11. Pomp and Ceremony

When she entered the atrium, all of the Necromongers that were housed in the Necropolis were gathered together. They were whispering among each other until they saw her standing at the entrance way, then it was an eerie humming that filled the air instead of the silence that should have been expected. An aisle surrounded by soldiers cut through the centre of the crowd, leading straight to the dais of the Lord Marshal's throne. Zhylaw was occupying it in full dress uniform, attended by the Purifier who stood by his right shoulder. He was not kidding, when he said that the Lord Marshall would attend.

Taking a breath, she walked up the aisle with her head held high. As she passed them, the soldiers lowered their weapons, blocking off the way for any to join her. When she approached the stairs, she bowed before the Lord Marshal. Walking up the stairs until she hit the one right before the level of the Lord Marshal, she knelt down to one knee.

All of this ceremony disgusted her, but she never let it show. From this point onward, she would do her best to avoid being in the presence of the one who had her people slaughtered. Looking around under the cover of her peripheral vision, she could spy Vaako and his charming little wife near the front of the crowd; Dame Vaako did not look so pleased that- what did she call her- a week and a half old convert fledging now had more power over her husband.

"This day, we have cause to celebrate. The Coalsack systems have rendered unto our forces six million new converts; those that survive the gauntlet will then thicken the ranks of our people!" The people assembled gave one unified cry of "Huzzah!" before falling silent again. Lyka tried not to roll her eyes: these people were nothing like she had been led to believe. Many of the people here were probably more concerned with gaining power and prestige as a Necromonger instead of keeping their faith alive. It was no longer her faith, but she had to pretend that it was. She obviously fit right in with the power-mongers. How ironic was that, when earlier she denied that very accusation from Dame Vaako.

The Lord Marshal's next words brought her out of her thoughts. "Today as well, we celebrate the initiation of a new Purifier, one who has lived our faith for her entire life before even joining the ranks of the Necromongers. Lyka Divakar has earned the rank of Purifier, second-in-command of that venerated group as chosen by its leader." A murmur buzzed through the crowd, but a steady glare from the soldiers quieted them down once more.

With a nod from the Lord Marshal, the Purifier began to decorate Lyka with her rank. He pinned on the broad golden epaulets to the stiffened shoulders of her jacket: he must have been nervous, because the pins just barely missed her shoulders when he slid them through both jacket and tunic. The tip of his finger reached ever so slightly to the end of one of her white microbraids, stark against all the black and the glimmer of gold. Reaching discreetly in her pocket, she handed back to him the pendant that he gave her when he expressed his desire to make her a Purifier. Taking it from her hands so that the crowd could not see, he slipped it around her neck.

The next words were ceremonial, but they had to be spoken. They were so hollow, so empty. Without the deeds behind them, they were nothing but hot air. But the Lord Marshal did not know that, nor did the Purifier. No one needed to know that this guise of a devout Necromonger Purifier was simply that, a guise.

"Obedience without question. Loyalty 'til UnderVerse come." The words came out strong, but she felt the need to spit them out before they infected her. She needed to remain herself, an alpha Furyan once again proud of who she was, or her promise to her mother would become a moot point once again.

"Arise, Purifier." Getting up from her knee, the Lord Marshall walked past her from his throne to signal to all that the ceremony is over. When the Lord Marshal left, his entire staff of advisors and military commanders followed him to the war rooms on the upper levels of the Necropolis. The rest of the Necromongers dispersed, leaving Lyka alone as she walked back to her room.

Laying down and stretching on her bed, Lyka felt a sudden urge to test out the expansion of her gift that her mother had mentioned to her. This mind-reading gift could be powerful, but she needed to practice to make sure that she could do it without detection. That was the key, or else already tight security in the Necropolis would increase even more, and she did not feel up to undergoing an inquisition by the greater Quasi-Deads.

Taking a deep breath, she released the tension in her body as she let her mind go free. Her thoughts spread through the air with ease as she touched the minds of the others around her. It was cold and hot at once, but it was not as unbearable as when her mother came to her during the second trial and transformed her; she began to focus her thoughts on finding the Lord Marshal. He was the target of her probing, for she needed to find out why he was so interested in her. She knew that the Lord Marshal has never chosen favourites among the newly converted before; it was clear on the Purifier's face the day of their first meeting after the gauntlet.

His mind was wide open for probing, but before she could enter it to search, the Lord Marshal began to speak to his commanders. "When we reach Helion Prime, we should be able to recruit many more to our cause. We still find it reassuring in the case of our new Purifier, that others may already believe in this faith unknowingly. In any case, when we conquer that planet and the people there are converted, we wish that they spend time with this new Purifier Lyka Divakar. She is the perfect model for them to aspire to as converts. She understands this faith probably better than many of us here. Why else would she volunteer for the gauntlet both the first and second times?"

Lyka withdrew from the Lord Marshal's mind before the commanders started to discuss a never-ending war strategy. Taking another deep breath only to exhale quickly, she opened her eyes with a smile decorating her face. So, the Lord Marshal thought her special. This could prove to some advantage when they reached their next destination. Folding her hands underneath her head, Lyka closed her eyes once more. This time, her sleep was peaceful.


	12. Helion Prime

Helion Prime was so bright, so vibrant, and was so utterly defeated by their aerial and ground assaults as Lyka followed the Lord Marshal's procession down the stairs from the Necropolis. She had to reveal nothing, her face had to be clear of all her thoughts and emotions. Today, she was a Necromonger Purifier, here to convert others to the cause. It was her first planet to convert as second-in-command of the Purifiers; who knows how many would have to follow afterwards until she found her brother. That did not matter anymore –none of it mattered anymore- only that he complete her quest given from her mother.

Her neck was still in pain from the gauntlet, even three-and-a-half weeks afterwards. It would continue to linger for another few days because the deep muscle cramp that persisted, a common result of facing the gauntlet; some saw it as a continuation of the lesson that they were meant to learn. Still, walking behind the Purifier who followed the Lord Marshal to the auditorium where the future converts awaited them gave her a certain dread in her stomach. She was once in their position: frightened at the defeat of their planet in a single night, frightened at the options for their fates. Could she be strong and distant enough to set up these people into the machine of the gauntlet, to ignore their tears as the daggers probed their neck to create the marks of a Necromonger?

As she entered through the doors of the chosen auditorium, mothers with their children ran back from the entrance, fathers huddling them closer as so not to lose them. Already, their warriors had the perimeter surrounded, their weapons at the ready to put down any insurgents who still felt that their invasion was wrong. Lyka wanted to agree with the ones that fought to save their planet, but that would have breached her disguise. Necromongers had no more right than other planetary pirates to the need to conquer and break the backs of others to their wills.

The Purifier found a dais to stand on in the middle of the room so as to draw attention to him. "In this 'verse, life is antagonistic to the natural state of being. Here, humans in all their various races are a spontaneous outbreak, an unguided mistake. Our purpose is to correct that mistake, because there is another 'verse, a place where life is welcomed and cherished. A ravishing, ever-new place called UnderVerse. But that road to that 'verse crosses over the threshold." It was the same speech that she had heard on her first encounter with Necroism and its warrior converts.

As Lyka peered over the crowd, the blade in the small of her back began to heat with the fight instinct. Her fury was tamped down, but the need to fight was strong. Why was this? There was no one left to fight here. To combat this, she held her wrist behind her back and began to walk around the dais to stare into the souls of the defeated. Many of them had not given up, but instead held chins high and backs straight with the last remnants of prideful souls.

"Threshold! Take us to the Threshold!" The warriors spouted off the rhetoric in complete unerring unison. They were the only ones in all of the Necropolis who actually truly believed in the tenets of Necroism. They were the ones who fought for its expansion over this 'verse. They were not the higher class of Purifiers, who taught their doctrine, or the women vying for the ear of the Lord Marshal or any of his numerous commanders, vying for attention despite the service mantra Vaako taught her on her third day of being a convert.

The Lord Marshal, frightening in his full military regalia, stared around at the crowd. "What you call Death." Those four words triggered the renewed muttering among the people surrounding them and brought Lyka out of her reverie.

The Purifier continued to speak. "So this 'verse must be cleansed of life, so that UnderVerse can populate and prosper."

The Lord Marshal spoke up again. "Look around you! Every Necromonger in this courtyard, every one of the Legion Vast that just swept aside your defences in a matter of hours was once like you. Fought as feebly as you did. Every Necromonger that lived today is a convert."

A man yelled out from the crowd. "There'll be no conversions here!" Lyka scoffed; that man would die today for his defiance. He reminded her of Sulakma, defiant until the very end. She learned that they had to beat her into submission before they could even bind her to the machine and lower the blades. Where was her once-friend now? She had not heard word from any of the Aquila Major converts; where they still enduring the trials, or have they died off from their excess stubborness?

"It was hard for me to accept, too, when I first heard these words. But I changed. I let them take away my pain." The Purifier remained stoically calm as the defiant cries increased.

"You betrayed your faith!" This time, it was a mother cradling her child in her arms that cried in disbelief.

"Just as you will change when you realize that the Threshold to the UnderVerse will be crossed only by those who have embraced the Necromonger faith." He continued speaking as if he had not been interrupted. "For those of you who will right now, drop to your knees and ask to be purified."

Lyka stared at the crowd. Not a one person knelt. From the back of the crowd, a man strode forward. A senator by the looks of his clothes, his back was straight and his voice was strong in his resilience.

"We will not renounce our faith! No one here will do what you ask! It is unthinkable! This is a world of many peoples, many religions! And we simply cannot and will not be converted!" The people gathered began to stir at his words, but so did the Lord Marshal as he casually walked up to the person.

His next words were quiet. "Then I'll take your soul." With that, the nether portion of him stole out from his body and snatched the soul right out of the unfortunate senator. Lyka closed her eyes and shook her head. Such demonstrations were not necessary: this path had to be chosen out of free will or the gauntlet to transform the convert would be that much dangerous. She was living proof of that, but then, she had believed somewhat in the tenets of Necroism before she was even converted in the first place.

The senator stared in shocked horror at his soul leaving his body, reaching towards it before dying. With a thud, he fell to the floor as the Lord Marshal choked the soul. What happened to the soul also happened to the body. The room was as quiet as a tomb in confirmed fright as the Lord Marshal turned to stare at them.

"Join me, or join him." He was impatient and had no time for the détente necessary for coerce willing converts to their cause. Like a wave of choking silent defeat, the Helion Prime citizens knelt to their knee, for now they had no choice but to convert or die. Lyka nodded slowly as the new converts accepted the shroud of the Necromongers that settled on their shoulders.

As she turned, a spike of emotion in the back of her psyche caused her to stare into the faces of the crowd more closely. The fight instinct rose again inside of her for no apparent reason. She felt a fleeting presence, but she knew for sure as she tried to mind walk the crowd. She came upon a mind that disallowed her entrance into his thoughts. There was something guarding it: a silvery handprint.

Lyka gasped quietly. There was an alpha Furyan in the crowd. Her spine steeled as her gaze hit the back of the auditorium to the one man who was not on his knees. At the sight of him, her heart wrenched with the familiarities of her visions: this was her brother.

He stood proud and straight-backed, but his shaved gaunt face, the face of a hardened fighter of the penal system, was impassively void of emotion. Normally with people you can read their faces through their eyes, but Richard's eyes were covered by welding goggles that covered his eye-shine from the harsh lights in the auditorium, the same goggles that she saw in earlier visions. From what she could see, he bore no handprint of the Furyan but her mother would see to that eventually. Even as he stared around at the crowd, his clothes fit him like a glove: a black muscle shirt that belied his strength, cargo pants that were loose-fitting and could easily conceal any sort of weapons. Over his shoulders was a worn black cloak, probably one from the markets that she had recently passed through on the way here.

Out of the corner of her eye, she resisted the impulse to grimace as she saw Vaako walk towards her brother at the sight of him not on his knees before the Lord Marshal. Anger began to boil underneath her skin threatening to break the control. That man had no right as a simple soldier to go after the non-converted to persuade them to the cause. If that happened on every planet, then the numbers of those who crossed the Threshold before their due time and unconverted to the cause would increase exponentially. She began to take a few steps towards the inevitably ensuing conflict.

"This is your one chance. Take the Lord Marshal's offer and bow." Vaako tried to bare his sword before an alpha Furyan, even one unknowing of his heritage; what a fool.

But Richard held control, but his face-mask held resemblance to falling into the rage flowing in his blood. "I bow to no man." His voice was so deep, Lyka felt her heart leap in sisterly love of him. She did not want to comprehend how deep into her soul laid the fact that she missed him, even when she thought he was dead as a mere infant.

Vaako removed his helmet and stared with his death stare at the goggled eyes of the one who chose not to be converted, and tried a different strategy. "He's not a man. He's the holy Half-Dead whose seen the UnderVerse."

Richard raised his eyebrow as he turned his head to stare at Vaako. Almost at once, Vaako felt a flinch to back off. He was a warrior, however, and this was his objective. "Look, I'm not with everyone here." He stared around the auditorium and he stopped at Irgun, one of the most powerful and daunting warriors of the Necromonger forces. "But I will take a piece of him."

Vaako followed his gaze and smirked. Irgun was undefeatable in battle, bearing a knife in his back that one of his many opponents left there. He was a perfect warrior of the Necromonger forces, following its precept every day of his life. "A piece you will have."

Lyka knew the outcome of the fight before it even began. Even with the two mighty axes that he wielded with brutish precision, Irgun would never be a match for an alpha Furyan who had spent his life in the penal system. As Irgun advanced, swinging his axes in the air, Richard leant back out of the way, his shoulders shrugging off the cloak that would later only inhibit him in the fight. The way he moved, it was like water: fluid and non-stopping, but at the same time precise.

Irgun made another swing, but Richard stepped right out of their path. Irgun, now furious that his prize was not dead yet, made yet another swing. Richard ducked this time, the blades swinging inches above his back.

Standing up when the blades were upright again, he yanked the blade from out of Irgun's back, Stunned, Irgun leaned forward and swung his blades once more. When Irgun came close enough, Richard impaled Irgun's gut with his own blade with a grunt, once, twice, thrice.

A gasp filled the auditorium as Irgun collapsed backwards on the stairs; the Helion citizens backed out of the way of his corpse. With that, Richard turned to leave, but for the growing guard of soldiers around him.

"Stop him!" Lyka tore her gaze from her brother to the Lord Marshal as he walked past her up the stairs leading to the one who bested his best man in less that half a minute. The Purifier stayed where he was, but Lyka merged with the crowd to get closer to her brother.

Stopping at the body, the Lord Marshal stared at his best warrior for a moment. "Irgun. One of my best."

Richard shrugged. "If you say so." Lyka forced herself not to laugh at that; there was little that could defeat a Furyan, let alone an alpha Furyan zoned with battle rage.

The Lord Marshal leaned over for a moment, grabbing the blade from Irgun's corpse. Offering it to her brother, he seemed almost inquisitive when he asked, "What do you think of this blade?"

Taking the blade in one smooth motion, Richard stared at it for a moment before spinning it in his hand. It seemed like magic as the blade moved on top of his hand to his fingertips to his palms, circling and circling as he judged the blade in his own fashion. Stopping the motion and grabbing the blade's handle in his hand, Richard offered it back to the Lord Marshal. "I think it's a half gram heavy on the back side."

The Lord Marshal grabbed his wrist. "In my faith, you keep what you kill." But Richard refused to move as Lord Marshal Zhylaw tried to force his hand down. He cocked his head, staring more intently at the man before him. "Are you familiar to me? Have we met on some distant field?"

Richard glared back at him, his grip not wavering on the blade. "You'd think I'd remember." His lip was curling just a little, the only sign beside his tensed muscles that he was exerting any force at all.

The Lord Marshal kept his gaze on the unknown variable before him: a man unwilling to convert for absolutely no other reason then he did not want to. "You'd think I would, too." He held his gaze for a moment longer. A decision needed to be made: Lyka could see that decision plain on his face.

The Lord Marshal raised his voice to the soldiers behind him. "Take him before the Quasi-Dead." In typical Necromonger precision, soldiers surrounded her brother with weapons at the ready. Lyka made ready to move: no unconverted person could enter the Necropolis without the guide of a Purifier.

"Perhaps," a slithering voice crept up the stairs as she walked towards her brother, "the breeder would do it if somebody just asked him." Dame Vaako stared intently at him, trying to seem sexual in her moments. "It is a rare offer." She crept closer to him, touching his hand. "A visit inside the Necropolis." Richard just stood there staring back at her. He even leaned over to smell her hair as she circled around to face him. Lyka resisted the urge to roll her eyes: men, all were the same when presented with beauty before their eyes.

"It's been a long time since I smelled beautiful." His deep voice betrayed no sign of infatuation, but his eyes were impossible to read. Maybe it was just a simple statement of fact.

Grabbing his hand, Dame Vaako began to walk towards the door. "Let me show you the way." Lyka turned over her shoulder to steal a glimpse at Vaako. His face was schooled into showing no emotion as well, but his lip began to curl in contempt as his eyes followed his wife leading a stubborn man out of the doors before him. He was old-fashioned, indeed: insisting that his wife ask his permission before doing anything, especially when he knew that she would never do that.

Lyka followed the Purifier as he decided to follow Dame Vaako and the Lord Marshal back to the Necropolis. The time was nearing for her mother's words to ring true. Her brother would need her help, most certainly, but protection she could not provide that would damage that damnably Furyan pride that cursed her as well.

As they entered the dark halls of the Necropolis, it was Richard's turn to awed by the sight of the past Lord Marshals. She stopped paying attention to the tour and separated from the crowd. Richard was being led to an inquisition by the greater Quasi-Deads; they would peer into the thoughts and memories of the person to see if they indeed are a threat to the Lord Marshal. If the person resisted, as many did, the pain of the probing would increase exponentially. It was like sitting still while your fingernails were being pulled away one by one, but also like a giant needle being inserted into the back of your skull and piercing your brain matter.

Often times, the pain was so great that the individual broke down mind and spirit before they would allow the Quasi-Deads to get what they wished; it never mattered, since the Quasi-Deads always got what they wanted. She had dealt with those who had survived the process; they were meek and unquestioning, like little children wanting guidance of their mother. It disgusted her, but the probing was necessary to root out any malcontents. Luckily, she was never thought to be one of them, since she was a rising star among the Necromongers; "the perfect convert", the Lord Marshal had called her without knowing that she was listening in on the conversation.

Walking towards the chamber of the Quasi-Deads, she stayed in the shadows of one of the lower balconies. She needed to be near her brother. As she crept into the corner, her eyeshine appeared at her command, allowing her to view him during this time while staying in the shadows. Her blade in her back burned with the need to fight flowing under her veins, but her control fought through it, keeping herself calm instead of attacking those who would force an alpha Furyan to go through this. She could do nothing for him at this juncture in time that would not give away her standing in court.

Letting her thoughts roam free, she could hear that snake Dame Vaako explain that the Necropolis was the home of the last six Lord Marshals, Zhylaw being the most recent and the one who aspired to bring all of his people to the UnderVerse to end their pilgrimage. It was this Lord Marshal's wish that by the end of his life, this 'verse would be converted and ready to embrace their due time at the gateway of the UnderVerse.

Well, this was one life he would not take so easily. Day by day, Lyka had felt her beliefs, the ones that led her down the path of Necroism in the first place, fade into oblivion, steadily being replaced by the fact that she will see her mother again in this life, that she will have saved her baby brother. After that, she would accept and even embrace whatever life threw her way.

Noise came down from below: the entourage had finally come. It was time for the inquisition by the Quasi-Deads. Peering down from her post, Lyka spied Dame Vaako leading her brother to the platform. He had removed his goggles: his eye-shine suited his face. "There now. That is just perfect." Turning back around to leave, she looked back once more at her brother. "The most your resist them, the greater the damage will be." He looked confused, twisting the knife he still held in his hand to distract him.

Staring at the balcony across the room, Lyka spied the Lord Marshal and the Purifier. So they would be the ones asking the questions for the Quasi-Deads to probe into. That was strange. Normally just the Purifier would ask the questions. What was the sudden interest of the Lord Marshal in this single convert?

Then their voices crept in the air. _"Ah, a new one. You've brought us a new one." _A high-pitched whining sound filled the air as a magnetic field forced the knife out of Richard's hand and Richard onto his hands and knees. Lyka knew the feeling: it was the same as when her visions would come upon her. His face grimaced and he began to groan as the five Quasi-Deads were lowered from their hidden wall compartments.

They were disgusting to look upon, even more so then the lesser Quasi-Deads that were scattered among their frigates and the Necropolis itself. Fasting and depriving themselves of water, nourishment, and even movement had left these five creatures emaciated and feeble, rendering them not even human; their bodies were covered in thin black shrouds, but they seemed to have moulded the shrouds to them, for it moved with their writhing and jerking movements. Through this, their minds were honed to grasp onto the thoughts of others. Since their voices were lost in the constant fasting, small amplifiers were filled with black fluid so that they could project what they saw into words. Not caring about pain or suffering, they were the perfect interrogators.

_"Making entry. This won't take long." _Richard groaned as the Quasi-Deads proceeded in their work. His face was slowly turning purple from the exertion, the veins in his arms and face popping out of his skin. Lyka wanted so badly to help him, but she would be on that platform in his stead for interference. Instead, she watched through her eye-shine as her brother fought for the shield around his mind.

_"We've entered his neocortex."_ There was a crack as Richard fought even harder for his mind's sanctuary. But it was for naught_. "Ah! The Riddick!" _Their whispers seemed satisfied that they were searching in the right direction.

"Regress." The Lord Marshal's voice was cold; apparently he was not as impressed by their progress.

Following the Lord Marshal's command, the Quasi-Deads continued their interrogation. _"Scanning fresh memories. Thoughts of someone called Jack." _There was a pause. _"Now we find thoughts of an Elemental." _All through the process, Richard fought. Lyka's heart ripped in two at the sight of him imprisoned by the power of the Quasi-Deads.

Then the Quasi-Deads spoke a single word that stopped her heart. _"Furyans."_

The Lord Marshal, as Lyka stared up at him, started at this information as well. "Where does he come from? Who are his people? These are the things I need to know." Apparently the search was revealing things that the Lord Marshal did not expect. Lyka scoffed: he still believed that he has slaughtered all of her people's sons that day, did he not? Well, he missed one, the one that would bring him to ruin.

_"We find energy. We find Furyan energy. He's Furyan! Furyan! A Furyan survivor!"_ The Quasi-Deads were writhing under their shrouds. The energy that they found was overwhelming them, the first time in decades of interrogations; their communication bowls began to break one by one at the strength of the energy that they discovered in their newest victim. To stop this pain, they simply had one verdict._ "Kill the Furyan! Kill the Riddick! Kill the Riddick! Kill the Riddick! Kill the Riddick!"_ Their pleads did not fall on empty ears.

The Lord Marshal stared down below at his captive. "Kill the Riddick!"

Lyka had seen enough. Walking quickly back to her room, she locked the door behind her before opening her mind to the sights and thoughts of those around her. She could see Richard easily evade the guards as he raced to escape. The Lord Marshal was furious, yelling at his troops to capture him. Using her gifts, she bent the minds of the guards surrounding the entrance to the Necropolis to leave their posts and join the search. With this little distraction, Richard was able to escape out of this place. Lyka only wished that she could join him, but that was for another time.

Releasing her gift, she laid out on her bed. Before anyone saw her, she made sure that her eye-shine dissipated back into her normal color. So her brother was in this system; now she just needed him to come back to the Necropolis to help her and their mother exact revenge for the slaughter of their kind. She grinned to herself: this would be interesting to watch unfold.

Without warning, her body began to feel dizzy, her mind out of balance and beginning to darken. A vision overtook her sight: the Necromongers kneeling before a throne; the body of a dead female convert, blood dripping from her mouth; her brother, bloodied from a fight, sitting on the throne of the Lord Marshal, hiding his face before staring out at the crowd. Just like that, the vision stopped.

Lyka pondered the omens of her newest vision. This was indeed portentous: if her brother was to sit on that throne, then he would have killed Lord Marshal Zhylaw. The revenge of the Furyans would be complete, and she would at last be able to rest in peace. Slowly getting to her feet and turning on her side, Lyka let her body succumb to the relaxing sleep that beckoned at her.


	13. Old Friends

The next day, Lyka observed with her gift that the Lord Marshal had sent out a team to the outskirts of the Necropolis to find Riddick. Vaako was in charge of the team. She was still sprawled out on her bed in just her tunic and pants, monitoring the different activities in the back of her mind's eye. She would need to manipulate the Lord Marshal to send a team after Riddick to bring him back for purifying; it would indeed be a notch on his belt to have converted the last line of alpha Furyans still alive to his cause.

She rubbed the scars on her neck as she came up to sit. Vaako had returned from the scouting mission, interrupting a war conference between Lord Zhylaw, Toal, and Scales. The Lord Marshal was commanding Vaako to go with the tracker team he sent off world to "lens and cleanse" Riddick. Lyka enjoyed the poor captain's face when he questioned the need for a frigate against a single breeder; the Lord Marshal was furious at the perceived lack of faith from such an obedient captain, ordering to not question his orders and to take them on faith.

She was prepared to intervene in the Lord Marshal's thoughts, to convince him to send one of his captains to find Riddick and return him to the Necropolis for purification. It had been done before in previous Lord Marshals, sending troops to find specific breeders. But the Lord Marshal had proven most willing to help her cause on his own volition.

Someone knocked on her door. "Lyka? May I speak to you?" Severing the connection to her gifts and reining it back in, she slipped into her jacket before getting off her bed. When she opened the door, it was the Purifier; his voice sounded strained, his body language tense.

"Come in, my lord." She needed to say these words politely, but venom at the subservient address nearly killed her. After her objectives were complete, the only person she would ever kneel to again was her mother, the leader and seer of her people.

He darted his glance around the room as she closed the door behind him. "The Lord Marshal has decided to send me with a tracker team to track down this Furyan breeder." He seemed so worrisome over a little mission like this. "During my absences, you will need to take over my duties. A new group of converts have emerged from the gauntlet; some of them are old acquaintances of yours from Aquila Major. I'll need you to take their softened minds and mould them into the Necromonger doctrine."

"Of course, my lord." She remained standing as he refused the offered seat on her bed.

"Lyka Divakar, I have kept this a secret since before I was converted. Since I feel that I will not be returning from this mission, I must confide it in someone." Finally sitting on her bed, he removed his jacket to reveal a glowing silvery-blue handprint on the plane on his heart.

Lyka gasped as she knelt to the floor. "You're an alpha Furyan?"

The Purifier's face grew furrowed. "How would you know, unless-" His already furrowed face grew even more so when Lyka revealed her own handprint. "-unless you're of Furya as well."

"My true name is Lyka Riddick. The one whom you seek is my brother, the last male of my line. He is our only hope of-" Lyka stopped her words. She did not know that he would report her back to the Lord Marshal; the Purifier did not seem the type to play at games of manipulation, but he had to have had self-preservation at the forefront of his mind after being a Necromonger for so many years.

The Purifier shook his head, trying to explain the new knowledge to her. "Lyka, I have wanted to kill the Lord Marshal for so many years. I have done terrible things in the name of a faith that was never my own. I was simply too weak to complete the deed. Now, it falls to you: you or your brother must be the one to avenge us and our people." He took her hand and placed it on his heart, doing the same with his own hand. Among her people, it was a sign of absolute trust.

"Thirty years ago, a prophecy was made to who is now the current Lord Marshal. From the planet Furya would come a warrior that would cause his downfall. That is the reason behind the Furyan slaughter so many years past, Lyka." A tear came to his eye as he remembered the cries of the Furyans he had witnessed murdered before his eyes.

"The Necromonger in us both warns us to stop this course of action, to keep the faith in this time of doubt. But I am sure that the Furyan in us both, the alpha Furyan blood that runs pure, roars with imminent impeding victory." Lyka spoke quietly, voicing both their thoughts. For a moment, they simply stared at each other, the goal of their purpose so near at hand.

The Purifier stared at Lyka for a moment, then he left without another word; no more words were needed. Lyka closed her eyes before crawling back onto her bed. Something protruded into her back, forcing her to turn over for an inspection.

There, laying amidst the eschewed covers of her bed, was something that definitely was not there a few minutes prior. When she came out of the ordeal the second time around, she searched her room high and low for the gift that her mother bestowed on her. She had finally found it.

It was a blade, but unlike any blade she had seen before as she removed it from the scabbard for further inspection. Blue-rippled iron of the highest quality formed a blade the length of her forearm-and-a-half that was razor sharp from the base of the hilt to the tip. Its hand-and-half grip was iron, as well, wrapped in leather and secured with silver wires. The guard was a cruciform shape, but it was delicately detailed with the phases of the moon in silver leaf.

The scabbard was another piece of beauty, completing the look of the entire weapon. Although it was boiled and hardened leather, it was coated in a thin layer of black tar for further protection. Close to the braided edges was a tiny arabesque design of blue, white, and silver threading. Again, the phases of the moon cycle were detailed along the rawhide-braided edges when blade met scabbard. It was a work of art, even greater that many of her own blades. Lyka gasped as she brought out the last blade that she forged on Aquila Major: it was the mate, light to darkness, sun to moon. When she died, she vowed that both of these blades would be passed on down the alpha Furyan line of her family.

Knowing that there would be questions on how she acquisitioned the blade, she tucked it in the satchel with the rest of her blades. On the day when she would meet her brother again, she would wear both of the blades and raise them high when the Lord Marshal was finally brought down for his innumerable crimes against the entire 'verse, not just the travesty he committed against Furya those many years ago. But her duties were calling to her.

She was now the interim leader of the Purifiers while their leader was away on this mission. The main task of the Purifiers was to teach newly converted Necromongers about the path and history of Necroism. She was exempted from this training when she was found to have been a Necromonger, albeit an unofficial one, for the long years of her exiled stay on Aquila Major. Still, she had received basic history lessons when she emerged from the ordeal the second time so that she would be able to school the newcomers sufficiently.

Sliding into her jacket and leather boots, she stared at herself in the mirror for a moment. She looked more like herself then she had in a long time. This past month and a half, despite being the most change-ridden, turned out to be the longest time that she was able to have full nights of sleep. She was eating more and working out with the soldiers in her spare time when she was offered time away from her duties. Who knew, she thought as she slipped the pendant over her head and left the room, that some good would come of this...

Necromongers bowed out of her path, showing respect that was usually reserved for the leader of the Purifiers, the military commanders, and the Lord Marshal himself. She chuckled once, never breaking her stride until she reached the auditorium that housed the newly released converts.

When she opened the double doors and strode in, every single one of them looked up at her. All of the newly converted, there were maybe around five thousand, wore black hooded cloaks. Their eyes were all glazed with pain. The marks that riddled their necks were pink and still visibly sore; they would remain that way until their indoctrination was complete. But it was their faces that captured her heart and tore it to pieces.

Their faces were so pain-ridden, some simply sat in their seats without moving. Other gazed at her as she walked among them to inspect their faces like a goddess amidst mortals. Only a few had comprehending looks, those who understood what had happened to them and why. The gauntlet gave the horde of Necromongers a chance to weed out anyone who was not worthy enough to be one of them. It also punished those who thought that they could pretend to accept this way; strangely enough, both she and the Purifier had made it through.

"Converts." She did not know any of their names, nor did she want to. "You have all survived the gauntlet. Now your training into the life of Necromongers may begin." She paused before an elderly man with his cloak still drawn over his head. With unwarranted gentleness, she lifted the hood off his face. Her heart sank as she recognized Willai; but how different he looked: wrinkled skin, glazed wandering eyes, drawn and pale cheeks.

"Yes, milady?" Her heart sank even more. Her old teacher did not recognize her; the pain from the ordeal was known to erase memories, but it had not happened to people that she knew.

Shaking her head for a moment, Lyka continued. "This is downhill compared to the gauntlet. Many of you might have experienced the UnderVerse for a moment as you passed from the person that you once were, to the convert that you are now. However, you will not return to that place until it is your due time."

For the next three hours, she lectured the converts in the history of Necroism and the accomplishments of each individual Lord Marshal. They drunk in her words like water in the midst of a desert, hanging off the edges of their seats whenever she took a pause.

Finally, it was done. The converts were now fledgling Necromongers, the pain of the gauntlet fading into a distant memory. Many of the converts were starting to seem more human and less like thoughtless automatons bent on following this mindless doctrine to the letter. Others still seemed to feel the pain of the gauntlet (it would take some time for them to recover), but still there were a few in catatonic states, refusing to get out of the pain that they were forced into. Those would be the ones to die soon, the ones whom the gauntlet was simply too much for them to bear.

She headed towards the door, when one of the converts stopped her by placing her hand across her path. Staring Lyka in the face, the convert removed her hood. Without even making a sound, Lyka's heart wrenched with pain: the convert before her was Sulakma. But this was a different person than her once-friend. The pain was relieved from her face, but she stared in Lyka's face as if she was finding something amiss.

"Do I know you, Purifier?" Sulakma's voice was no longer bitter, but instead it was empty. Her eyes darted over Lyka's face, trying to focus on a vague memory. "Why do you seem familiar?" Her voice began to tinge with pained panic as she failed to remember. Her hand moved to caress her cheek, as if by touching it she would understand who Lyka was to her disrupted memories.

There was only one thing to do that would stop the wondering. Taking Sulakma's hand away from her face, Lyka put her hand on Sulakma's shoulder, stared her right in the eye, and said, "Perhaps we met in another life, convert." This was the code she was taught. Every Necromonger began as something else, but this life is more significant to the converts then the one that they left behind; this was the life that every convert and Necromonger alike was supposed to lead, their true life. Therefore, when someone recognized someone from their old life past any possible memory loss, they referred to the past life, the life before the gauntlet. Without another word, she walked past the new Necromonger and back to her quarters.

Lying down on the bed after removing the regalia of her office, Lyka stared at the ceiling. She felt no pain, no anguish over this feeling, this sense of worming guilt in her heart. There was nothing that she had done or could do to change the course that either of them had taken. Tomorrow would be a different day: more converts to train, more thoughts to disturb her. There was only one thought right now that dominated her mind: _"Where was her brother?"_


	14. Reunion

Four days had passed, four days of the same monotonous rhythm. Get up, monitor the Lord Marshal, teach the new batches of converts, eat something, sleep. If there were dead bodies among the converts from those that had failed the gauntlet's first test, she would assign soldiers to remove them. If there were no new converts that day that had overcome the gauntlet, then she would head down to the soldier's training areas for bouts to keep her swordsman skills sharp. There was no word from the Purifier, no sign of Riddick's return to the Necropolis.

On the fifth day, Vaako finally returned bearing both grave and good news. All of the Necromongers were gathered in the atrium to hear the public rendition of Vaako's report. Standing before the occupied throne with a bowed head, he shared the results of the tracking expedition: Riddick had been slain, but the Purifier and some of his soldiers had also been lost. Murmurs rang throughout its metallic hollowness, but Lyka remained tall. She was now the leader of the Purifiers, the one chosen by her predecessor to gather the non-believers to convert and train and fill the ever-growing ranks of the horde.

The Lord Marshal, sitting before them all on his throne, made an impromptu announcement. "For all the faithful gathered here, today will be a day of days. We have lost our Purifier and a small number of troops, but have gained a first in both a commander and in a Purifier. Come forward, Lyka Divakar."

Like a machine programmed to obey, she walked to the base of Lord Marshal Zhylaw's throne to kneel with her head bowed in a mask of respect alongside Vaako. He removed her pendant and replaced it with a similiar one, only made of gold. Taking off her epaulets, he rewarded her unwavering service with more elaborate ones. Opening her hands, he placed the elaborate skull cap and finger-guards in her hands. Her only response was the rote, "Obedience without question, loyalty 'til UnderVerse come." Bowing her head as she got off her knees, she removed herself from his presence and walked back to her room.

Two Purifier acolytes awaited her there. Without a word, they tied her microbraids until they hung in a single braid against her back and slid the helmet over top her head. The helmet was cold and quite uncomfortable, but she did not let it show on her face. When that was done, they slid the knuckle-guards over until her hands were stiff with the weight of the metal. Dismissing the acolytes from her room, she removed the helmet and looked down at it with disgust. Her head felt light; it didn't weight the same and it felt awkward not feeling the sway of the microbraids as she turned her head to the side when she looked in the mirror; there was just the thin hemp rope holding back the multitude of her hair. Going back over the ceremony, venom crept into her system.

She stopped trusting Vaako the moment his wife marked her eyes with the soldering iron. He was a loyal soldier, all right, but the scheming of his wife would get them both killed if she did not become more subtle about it; she wanted her husband as the next Lord Marshal. Well, that was never going to happen. Her visions were never wrong to date. Riddick must still be alive.

Removing the new badges of her office, she stretched out on her bed. Closing her eyes and releasing her mind, she delved quietly into the recent memories of Vaako's journey. Replaying the events back in her own head, she smiled quietly to herself. Riddick had finally met their mother and had been marked as alpha Furyan. She watched in awe as he utilized the Wrath of the Furyans, a special power that only her line could use in the most desperate of times. After he deployed it, he was unconscious on the ground, but he was still alive.

Opening her eyes, Lyka smiled. Vaako was given a commander rank on a false hope; oh, how that would twist Dame Vaako when they both found out the truth. Riddick would come back here to kill those who tried to kill him. When he arrived to the Necropolis, she would be waiting for him.

The ship began to jostle, forcing her to sit up in bed. They were taking off already?! No, as she relaxed back into bed, the armada was gathering together, but they were not taking off just yet. The Lord Marshal was calling for ascension protocol; the Necromonger horde was leaving and completely cleansing Helion Prime in their trail.

Relaxing her mind again, she caught a presence as he entered the ship. It was a different mind then that of a Necromonger: this one was brimming with anger and hatred. This was a Furyan mind: Riddick! Her brother was on the ship!

This was the moment she had waited for. Gathering up her strength, she entered his mind. "_Riddick_," she whispered into his thoughts. _"Riddick, if you want to kill the Lord Marshal, you must come to me first." _

She almost broke the connection in shock when she heard a reply. _"Who are you?"_ His mind-voice was as deep as the voice she remembered on that first day of Helion Prime. Her mother never told her that others could answer her mental call.

_"Just another person with a score to settle. All your questions will be answered when you follow my directions, brother."_ With that, she began to guide his steps toward her room. Still in the trance, she gathered up her collection of weapons. The two forearm-and-half hip swords she kept on the bookcase, separate from the rest of the weapons, while patting the small of her back for the Furyan dagger that her mother had given her thirty years ago. The rest of her collection, she displayed on the blackness of her bed. Finally, she heard a knock on the door.

Her brother, Riddick, stood before her. He wore the regalia of a Necromonger soldier in order to even enter the ship. He was even more magnificent close up: the muscular bricks that made up his darkly tanned torso and limbs. Underneath the cap of the helmet, his eye-shine shone out discreetly. His face was guarded from emotion, but she could feel a sense of betrayal rolling off of him as he stood there.

"Hurry!" she whispered to him as she literally pulled him into her quarters. He took off his helmet. She turned her back to him to close the door, only to find a dagger to her throat as she turned around.

"Who the fuck are you?" The knife was keenly sharpened, daring her to fight back. "Why should you want to help me?" His voice was low and threatening in her ear.

"I'm one of you, Riddick, a Furyan of pure alpha lines." She let her eye-shine show and stared into his eyes. The room was dim enough that they both could see the other. "I'm your sister."

"Yeah, right. Do you honestly take me for a sucker?" He glared at her, but the blade had not moved to deal the killing blow.

Moving as little as possible, she showed her hand print, glowing in the dark. "Your hand print is right here." Keeping her neck as still as possible, she removed the left breastplate of his armour, placing her hand on his new glowing hand print; it was still warm from the transfer of power. Her hand and the print matched up perfectly. "Place your hand on mine, Riddick." No longer the mercenary, his face was amused as his large callused hand matched her hand print.

"We match, brother." Lyka reverted back to her normal golden hawk eyes.

"Why do you call me that? I have no family, unless you count the mercs on my neck from every penal system from here to Ursa Luna." His voice was controlled but not completely devoid of emotion. There was a tinge of confusion, and an undercurrent of sarcasm. He slowly removed the blade from her neck.

"Do you remember the vision in which you were marked? Was there a woman in it: black microbraids, tanned skin, brown eyes?" Riddick nodded once. "The woman in the vision is our mother, Shiira. She appeared to you before, didn't she, when she bestowed on you the eye-shine of the selected few alpha Furyans? She is responsible for the re-building of Furya after the Great Slaughter, and she has charged both of us with the destruction of the Necromongers." The burden that her mother had given her for the completion of this last mission weighted heavy on her shoulders.

"You were there, weren't you? That day in the auditorium, when they brought me in here?" The problem with eye-shine is that Lyka could not tell if her brother was lying or not.

"Yes, Riddick." That name felt weird on her tongue. She knew her brother before they met as Richard, but when the Quasi-Deads introduced him like that, the name suited him. He had an air about him that proved what her mother had told her: for better or for worse, Riddick had spent most of his life in the penal system, and it showed.

"That's why you seem familiar." He released his stance, looking around her room. When his eyes fell on the weapons displayed, he nodded. "Not bad. You make all these?"

"Yeah, brother." She let him inspect her work, watching carefully as he lifted several of them into the light. "You can use any of them for the task at hand, if you don't have your own."

Riddick stared at her as if she was stupid, but he understood. "That's useless. I always have my own." He revealed the two curved blades that he smuggled in under his leather wrist guards, and the blade stuck in the tie of his boots. Lyka nodded when she realized that that knife was the same knife that he used to kill Irgun, the one that the Purifier had guarded for him when he lost it after his inquisition with the Quasi-Deads "Never leave home without it."

"Fine." She gathered up the two forearm-and-a-half swords and stuck them into her belt. Feeling around the small of her back, she found her Furyan dagger and moved it for easier access.

"I never got your name, sister." The word felt awkward coming from his mouth. This was a man who had learned the hard way to depend on yourself and only on yourself, that no one else was worth trusting. But having someone to trust was going to be an obstacle for him to overcome when they would return to Furya.

"It's Lyka, Riddick." Her heart began to heal just saying her name to him, introducing herself after thirty years of mourning and one-and-a-half months of planning and resolving herself to the fact that her brother was alive.

"Lyka." He separated her name into its syllables. He ran his finger along the edge of the blade. "What's the plan?" He stared at her through his eye-shine.

"You kill the Lord Marshal, and then we deal with the rest of the Necromongers." She paused for a moment. "I know you're going to succeed, Riddick. I have been blessed- or cursed- by true visions. The most recent one revealed the Lord Marshal dead and you on his throne, the rest of the Necromongers bowing to you." He looked incredulous, as if she was speaking a totally different language.

"I like that plan." He smiled a cocky smile, then his face grew together as he saw the marks on her neck. "What the fuck? You're one of them?"

She rubbed her hands over her marks and sighed. "It's a long story, Riddick. Just know that I'm not, not anyone."

Somewhat satisfied with that answer, he asked another question. "Lyka, have you seen a girl around here? Kyra? She wouldn't be one of these freaks; at least, not yet."

"No, Riddick. I'm not in charge of putting the converts through the gauntlet, only training them after they have completed the gauntlet. I'm sorry," as she saw his face fall into uncertainty. This woman obviously meant something to him; did he love her?

Shaking her microbraids loose of their wrappings to clear her head, she shut her mind out of her brother's business. There would be no way that she would mind-walk into her brother. "Riddick, when the Necromongers realize that you're on the ship, the security will heighten. The best place for you to find is in the Quasi-Dead grotto. That area is sacred and the soldiers would not inspect more thoroughly than a quick glance. You can kill them if you want. They've caused enough people pain; no one will mourn their loss after we are through with them."

"Exactly what is your plan to kill all of the Necros and escape?" He seemed amused, as if they were trying something impossible and never done before just for the lark of it.

Here, Lyka paused in her thinking. She did have an idea, but it was a one-in-a-lifetime chance of working, what her Jesusist colleagues back at the Aquila Major academy used to refer to as a "Hail Mary pass". "Riddick, do you remember on Crematoria when you were just marked with the hand print? You harnessed a power and flung back all of the soldiers that had tried to attack you?" She waited for a nod of acquisition before continuing. "It is an ability called 'The Wrath of the Furyans'. It accesses the rage of our people and transforms it into a weapon that can be used against our enemies. When two or more alpha Furyans are together, they can combine their power and destroy every living person around them within a two-mile radius. Because all of the Necromongers are gathering in the Necropolis, one single blow can kill them all. That is what we will accomplish once you defeat him."

"I don't know whether I can do that again. It seemed kinda like a one-time deal, little sis."

"That's big sis to you, little brother." She smiled genuinely for the first time since becoming a Necromonger: Riddick was almost twice her size, and he would still be her little brother, hers to protect whether he wanted that or not. "And yes, the Wrath can be used more than one in a person's lifetime. Because I have not accessed that power, it will be all the more potent."

_"Of course, my children."_ Shiira's voice filled the air. Turning to the corner from where it was projected from, Lyka bowed her head at the growing apparition of her mother. _"This is a good plan, and you will succeed where countless others have attempted and failed to avenge our people. Know that I will be with you when the time comes, and that time draws near." _This time, Shiira wore the robes of the priestess, imperial majesty flooding the air around her.

"Thank you, mother." Lyka bowed her head. Beneath the cover of her loose braids, she peered at Riddick. He seemed confused again, but this time there was no false bravado in his stance.

_"My wayward, wayward son."_ Without a thought, Shiira walked over to him and embraced him. _"We will meet again when your task is complete. Know that I have always watched over you, and am proud of what you have done. Your father is, too; he waits for you back home."_

"You're proud of me? Proud that I'm the most feared convict in the galaxy?" His fists began to clench, his knuckles whiten. Shiira's apparition backed away and stared into his face.

_"Riddick, the worlds of this universe have never understood Furyans or our ways. To me and to our remaining people, you are a hero: never wavering, never apologizing, never changing what or who you are to fit conventional norms. Even you, Lyka,"_ as Shiira turned to her, _"are seen as a hero: finding yourself after losing your way, always making sure to never apologize for your actions as well. I am proud of both my children."_ Her seemingly solid arms embraced both of them as she began to dissipate. _"Neither of you will fail, now that you are together." _

As she disappeared from their sight, Lyka turned to her brother. Steel had reinforced her spine. She wrapped her braids up once more and fit the helmet over her head. She nodded to him, her eye-shine shining through and replacing the golden hawk eyes as she stared at him. "It's time."


	15. The Wrath of the Furyans

Lyka sat in the darkened corner near the Lord Marshal's throne, peering around to gaze at the whole of the atrium. Riddick was in position, the guards were searching for him, and the Lord Marshal was getting ready for final protocol; he had stripped off his robe and helmet in favour for a metal skullcap that meshed into chain mail to cover his neck. The Necromongers were gathering in the atrium in response to the increased patrols. All was set. Any second now, the downfall of the Lord Marshal would begin.

From the grotto of the Quasi-Dead came metallic sounds. Riddick told her that he always sharpens his blades before a fight. That was the signal. The doors to the grotto opened wide, the guards fell to the ground with a blade each in their eyes. Riddick leapt towards the target while reaching to the knife in his boot. It was so perfect, the Lord Marshal did not even know. But it was too perfect.

The Lord Marshal grabbed a hold of Riddick's clothes and tossed him to the floor. The guards flooding the atrium with their weapons bared came forward, ready to kill the would-be Furyan assassin.

"Stay your weapons!" The Lord Marshal walked around the Furyan, holding his hand out to stop the slaughter. Necromongers began to mingle in the crowd, "He came for me." Keeping his hand out, a convert walked forward. Lyka stood up and walked to the right hand of the Lord Marshal. One of her underlings was in charge of training the converts today because she had desired to perfect her swordsmanship. The Lord Marshal turned the convert to face Riddick and removed her hood.

Riddick's face paled at the sight of the woman before him. Lyka saw the instant connection between the two of them. This must have been the Kyra person he was talking about. She was pale from the gauntlet, the marks swollen on the sides of her necks. Still lethargic, her eyes were glazed over by the residual pain. Lyka looked over to the acolytes: this woman had never passed the gauntlet; she was just put through it to torture her. Her blades began to heat up with the fight instinct, but she had to remain calm. This was Riddick's fight now.

"Consider this." There was a good reason that the Lord Marshal was known as both a warrior and an orator, and the proof fell before every one of the witnesses' eyes. "If you fall here now, you'll never rise. But if you choose another way," he looked towards Kyra and then towards Riddick, "the Necromonger way, you'll die in due time and rise again in the UnderVerse."

He looked into the face of Kyra, and whispered into her ear. "Go to him." He then stared at Riddick with the smuggest look on his face, as if he was proud of himself for baiting his greatest opponent thus far.

She walked slowly, probably still feeling the effects of the gauntlet running through her blood. "It hurts, at first." She stared at her brother with those pain-glazed eyes. Lyka thought she looked almost dead; this Kyra, probably a very strong person, had to have had something break in her in the short time that she was in the gauntlet for. "But after a while, the pain goes away, just as they promise."

Riddick looked down at her, hurt and disbelief in his eyes. "Are you with me, Kyra?"

She acted as though she did not hearing, but just kept on talking. "There's a moment when you can almost see the UnderVerse through his eyes. It makes it sound perfect, a place where anyone can start over."

Riddick began to grind the knife in his hand, the Furyan rage within him threading the edge of his voice. "Are you with me, Kyra?" Looking down to the ground, Kyra walked back into the crowd; Riddick's gaze never left her.

"Convert now, or fall forever." The Lord Marshal's voice rang through the atrium. He sounded so victorious, as if he had already defeated Riddick.

Riddick stared behind him, the hurt in his face compounded now with resolve. "You killed everything I know." Lyka wanted to brush her hand against her heart, but she remained still. All of her work relied on Riddick successfully beating the Lord Marshal on his own.

Pivoting on his feet, Riddick launched the blade out of his hand with a grunt, letting it spin straight and true towards the Lord Marshal. Falling against the force of the attack, he collapsed against the steps of the dais, his hand against his neck. All of the Necromongers were in shock, except Lyka. In her vision, Riddick was bruised and bloodied when he sat on the Necromonger throne. The time was not right, yet.

The Lord Marshal slowly got up from the stairs; the blade was grasped firmly in his grip. At the very tip of the blade was a line of blood from the Lord Marshal's ear. He glanced at it, curious at the sight before him. "Been a long time, since I've seen my own blood." He began to walk forward, holding the knife out away from him.

When he stopped walking to face Riddick, he dropped the knife and ran towards her brother with the speed of his nether soul leading him onwards. With the force of a train, the Lord Marshal pushed Riddick against the pillar right behind him. For a moment, Riddick was still. Even though Lyka already knew the outcome of the fight at hand, her heart still stopped for a moment as she watched her brother lay on the ground.

With an unsteady grunt, Riddick got to his feet. Shaking his head slightly, he faced the Lord Marshal once more. They stared at each other for a moment. Riddick grimaced his face as he got ready to move, but the Lord Marshal was too quick for him. Running towards him at an angle, Lord Marshal Zhylaw relied heavily on his speed to throw off Riddick. At the moment, it was working.

He jumped to the other side to catch Riddick off guard, and handed off two punches to his torso. Riddick was too slow, always moving a few seconds too late. The Lord Marshal never stayed in one spot for too long, always moving quickly as he kicked and punched Riddick like a rabbit. Riddick was able to get off a few punches, his face set in furious concentration.

Lyka found that the fight was not going too well. At one point, the Lord Marshal simply held his head still with his nether soul as his physical self punched Riddick in the jaw. Somersaulting over her brother's head, the Lord Marshal was about to strike again when Riddick's elbow connected with his neck.

Both were losing strength, but Riddick was the one refusing to give up. He began to throw more punches, finally understanding the Lord Marshal's only weakness: his nether soul proceeded his physical self by a few seconds, a precursor to his actions. If Riddick aimed his blows for the nether soul then he would hit the Lord Marshal before his physical self would retaliate. When Riddick would successfully connect a blow, the Lord Marshal would glare at him for a moment before he would continue his dizzying dance.

The two of them exchanged blows for a while, the Lord Marshal always seeming to get more in. Finally, Riddick fell to the floor. The Lord Marshal stood triumphantly over him before turning back to the silent crowd of his followers. "These are his last moments." Lyka grabbed the pillar to keep her in place, else she would stab the Lord Marshal herself.

Kneeling down by his head, the Lord Marshal reached out with his nether soul and grabbed onto Riddick's face. The silvery-blue substance began to pull away from the downed Furyan, taking his soul with him. However, Riddick was not going to give up that easily. His soul, as everyone watching saw, refused to leave his body. Riddick held onto the floor, grunting as he gained the advantage.

With a quicksilver move, Riddick corkscrewed to stand while punching the Lord Marshal right on the chin, tossing him across the room; the nether portion of the Lord Marshal's soul flew out of control before returning to his body. "Fuck you!" He stood proud, glaring down at the fallen Lord Marshal. He knew that the fight was not over yet. The crowd stepped back, not wanting to be hit by the Lord Marshal. They knew that the fight was not over, but they had no idea of what the outcome of the fight would be.

The Lord Marshal lifted his head to glare at Riddick. Jumping to a stand, he eyed the giant statue of Covu the Transcended above the throne; more specifically, he eyed the spear that the statue was protruding into his ear. Jumping like a rabbit to the shoulder of the statue, he wrenched the spear out before jumping back to the floor of the atrium, bringing the blunt end of the spear to the ground where Riddick was just standing.

Lyka just stared on impassively, her emotions once again under control. The game of cat and mouse began again. Riddick ducked, rolled, and leapt out of the way of the spear's butt, but the Lord Marshal was gaining speed. At one point, the Lord Marshal thrust the spear right towards Riddick's torso. Stepping out of the way, Riddick held the spear against his armour with his forearms to try and wrench it away, glaring at the Lord Marshal the entire time. He tried to punch the Lord Marshal, adjusting his grip.

The Lord Marshal leaned back and swung the spear's blunt end into Riddick's stomach, making him tumble to the ground. As soon as Riddick got to his feet, the Lord Marshal stuck the sharpened end of the spear into the crease of Riddick's breastplate and torso. Using sheer brute force, he lifted Riddick into the air and began to run with him across the atrium; Riddick tried to lift himself off the spear to fall to the ground. With a flick of his wrist, Lord Marshal Zhylaw shoved Riddick off the spear and twisted it to break Riddick's stance. The butt of the spear broke off in the process.

Riddick twirled until he fell hard against the first of the dais' stairs. Although Lyka knew the outcome of the fight, she still had to fight hard to make sure she stayed where she stood. This was Riddick's fight, and she could not interfere.

The Lord Marshal tossed the spear aside. Walking towards one of the soldiers standing around the fight's perimeter, he grabbed the super-sized mace-spear out of his hands. Still keeping his pace, he slid the spear underneath Riddick and flipped him up into a kneeling position against his own body. He slid the shaft of the mace up to Riddick's neck, pressing Riddick against his armour, choking him. "You're not the one to bring me down." Riddick fought against the shaft's weight, trying to reach for the Purifier's blade just inches away from his grasp.

All of a sudden, the Lord Marshal gasped and let go of Riddick. He scrabbled at his back, his discarded spear protruding from it as the would-be convert Kyra forced it deeper into his armour. Riddick looked at her for a moment, for once comprehending the fact the Necromongers can be beholden to something other then their faith. Kyra returned the stare for a moment, the pain driven out by clear-headed reasoning tinged by serious affection.

His face riddled with furious betrayal, the Lord Marshal turned and tossed Kyra away from him. She flew across the atrium only to land on the spiked pillars that guarded the throne. A painful gasp left her mouth, but there was no shock left to be seen on her face.

From one of the mezzanines, Dame Vaako's voice rang out. "Now! Kill the beast while he's wounded!" Lyka stopped caring about any of her plots, and focused her attention on the woman pierced by the throne. She would die if nothing was done to staunch the bleeding. Walking as fast as she could without drawing attention to herself, she made it to the pillars, but not before Kyra stopped her with a motion of her hand. Her breathing quickened as one of her hands found the column and pushed herself off it.

Lyka knelt to her side, making sure to cradle her head. Kyra gazed up at her for a moment, then rolled out of her arms to lay on her side and face Riddick. Blood dripped from her mouth as she saw the Lord Marshal fall to his knees from the surprise blow. With obvious effort, he pulled the weapon out of his back. Lyka looked over the wounds to Kyra's back; she was not going to last long. Removing her helmet and her finger-guards, she placed her hands over the wounds to try and staunch the blood. She removed her jacket and made Kyra lay on it to put pressure on the wounds. All the while, she kept her eyes focused to the centre of the atrium.

Vaako leapt down from the mezzanine, a ceremonial axe in his hand. Riddick stared up at him, wounded pride in his eyes. Lyka looked down at him from her kneeling on the dais. Did he honestly not trust her visions? Of course he did not; he has not trusted anyone for a long time, and every time he did it got spit back into his face.

When the Lord Marshal saw his newly-christened commander coming towards him, his face relaxed. "Help me, Vaako. Kill him." He continued to groan as Vaako walked closer to him. When Vaako ignored his command and continued to walk towards the Lord Marshal, confused disbelief filled his face. "Vaako?"

The most loyal of the Necromonger commanders turned out to not be that loyal after all as he hefted the axe over his head. His voice was strong. "Forgive me." Lyka scoffed. The law of the Necromonger won through: if the Lord Marshal showed any sign of weakness, then he was unworthy of lordship. Vaako was simply staking his claim to become the next Lord Marshal, probably at the behest of his wife.

The nether portion of the Lord Marshal's soul began to run away from the eminent axe strike. It was too late. The soul portion stared up at Riddick, the Purifier's blade in hand. It was like a well-orchestrated composition. Vaako swung the axe downwards. The Lord Marshall's physical self joined where his nether soul was positioned to escape. Riddick's arm swung down; the knife embedded itself into the forebrain of the Lord. Riddick broke the hilt off the blade and kneed the man before him in the chin, letting the deposed Lord Marshal fall to the cold floor of the atrium. Dame Vaako screamed in agony as her schemes unravelled before her eyes.

Riddick walked to Kyra, cradling her underneath her shoulders. Lyka knelt by his side, the woman's blood staining her hands where she tried to hold Kyra still as she tried to staunch the bleeding. "I thought you were dead." Her breathing slowed and began to labour.

Riddick stared at her, unadulterated mourning love in his eyes. "Are you with me, Kyra?" His voice was so quiet, so pained. Lyka felt almost sacrilegious invading this moment by her sheer presence.

Kyra tried to laugh as she lifted her head to stare at him, but ending up tiredly sighing instead. "I was always with you. I was." Her eyes grew dark as her last breath fled her body. Her neck rolled with gravity to her right side, never to move again.

Riddick let her gently down to the ground, his face torn in the utter sadness that only profound loss can bring on. He sat back into the Lord Marshal's throne, his hand covering his face to hide his emotions.

Lyka stood next to him, only to kneel before him. Riddick had declared himself Lord Marshal, leader of the Necromongers and high commander of their militant forces. Her vision had come true as she had told her brother. Riddick stared out at the crowd as they too began to kneel to him. She was the only one close enough to him to hear him say, "You keep what you kill."

Lyka lifted her head. She could feel her mother's spirit fill her soul, willing her to complete the final step of the Furyan vengeance. Riddick stared at her and nodded his head. As if they had done this so many times before, Riddick removed his stolen Necromonger armour and his muscle shirt, Lyka her jewellery and tunic down to her breast band. Some of the Necromongers in the front row gasped in horror at the hand print glowing on their hearts. Like a unit, Riddick placed his hand over Lyka's heart; Lyka placed her hand over his heart, and closed their eyes.

A heat began to fill their bodies from the very tips of their toes to the roots of Lyka's hair. At first it was warm, but then it began to grow in temperature until it was almost unbearable. The air around them began to swirl with the heat. They kept the connection of their hands to their hearts as the heat began to make their handprints glow golden. Lyka and Riddick just continued to breath in unison, their mother's presence guiding their motions.

Still and still the heat grew until their very skin began to glow white from the heat. Lyka's braids began to rise from the power resonating from within her. None of the Necromongers present were around from the last Lord Marshal, so they assumed that this was the initiation into the position. Not even the commanders were from the previous Lord Marshal's reign; nobody had any idea of what was going on.

Finally the pain became too much to bear. A primal need came from within them for survival. Together, Lyka and Riddick screamed, releasing the power that had grown within them. It was like a wave of golden nuclear power that hit every one of the Necromongers, throwing them back against the floor. Lyka could feel every one of them losing their life and fuelling the wave to the next Necromonger.

As suddenly as the wave started, it stopped. Tentatively opening her eyes, Lyka saw no one around. All that was on the floor was ashes and blown-off clothes. It was as if a flaming wind had destroyed all of the Necromongers. The only people still here was Riddick, the body of Kyra, and Lyka herself. All of the Necromongers in the Necropolis were gone.

She removed her hand from Riddick's chest and let her mind wander to each of the frigates where the soldiers were housed. There were no thoughts, no spark of life of any of them. Everyone was dead, no one was alive. The vengeance was complete, the deed was gone.

There were no words left in her to describe the utter joy that she felt welling inside of herself. "Riddick, it's time."

He was carrying Kyra's still form in his arms like a fragile doll. "Time for what, Lyka?" He was not looking at her, but at Kyra's calm face.

"It's time to go home."


	16. Home at Last

The shuttle ride was quiet as Lyka guided the three-man shuttle to land on the Plains of Destiny. Neither of them went into cryo-sleep, instead piloting the ship in shifts. Lyka took the majority of them so Riddick could cradle his lost love in his lap. Kyra would be buried with full burial rites among the seer-leaders of Furya, the highest honours ever accorded to a foreigner.

Looking out the window as she slowed the craft down to a stop, Lyka's heart stopped for a moment. Staring out of the darkened window, all of her people were surrounding the ship, their cheers filling the air. In the front of the crowd stood her mother in her ceremonial robes. Tears unashamedly flowed down her face. Standing next to her was her father, whom she had not seen since she was a child. His face was beginning to wrinkle, but he was the spitting image of Riddick.

Lyka turned over her shoulder as she undid her seat restraints to look at her brother. He was still gently cradling Kyra in his arms, his eyes memorizing her serene face. He said not a word during the entire trip, and Lyka respected him enough to not spy into the recesses of his mind. "Riddick. It's time." He had taken off his goggles, and now stared at with eye-shine reflecting his inner pain.

Without a word, he lifted up Kyra and walked down the opening walkway. Lyka followed in his footsteps, turning on her eye-shine as she walked onto the sunset-lit plains. Her eyes held no one's gaze as she mechanically smiled and hugged people that she had not seen in thirty years. She simply stared ahead at her parents, patiently waiting until she was within reach.

When she reached her mother, she knelt to the ground in her Necromonger robes, the two swords of her line strapped to her waist. "Mother, it is done. The Necromongers are dead." Turning to her father, she planted the swords in the ground. "Our people have been avenged, father. We are free, once more."

The cheering from the crowd intensified. Everyone lifted Lyka off her feet for more embraces. Shiira and Richard gathered her in her arms for a mighty embrace, letting her joyous emotions run free in front of her people. They radiated away from Riddick, still withdrawn from the crowd and holding the body of his mate.

Still serious, Lyka looked into her mother's searching face. "Mother, I ask that you grant this woman full Furyan rites among the seers of our line, for without her aid, we surely would have failed." Shiira motioned for Riddick to come forward. He parted the crowd with ease, his back straight, his face set in stone.

Shiira grabbed her daughter's hands and began to chant in an ancient language. Lyka felt her energy being slowly drained for the spell. The people began to spread out, leaving Riddick alone with a steady blue glow surrounding Kyra's body. Kyra's body left Riddick's arms and levitated for a moment over a steady growing hole in the ground. Moving as gently as she could, Shiira let her body float downwards into the burial plot. As the earth began to fill in, Riddick dropped to his knees and began to weep at last.

The spell was not quite done yet. Using only her mind, Shiira formed a granite plaque that embedded itself on the earth. To all the crowd around them, it read, "Here lies Kyra, saviour of our people. Loved in life, she shall be remembered in death." Beneath the description was a knife in a sheath carved into the rock. Riddick lowered his head as he stopped crying and his face set once more. At last, the crowd began to disperse leaving only her family.

For the first time in eight days since the extermination of the Lord Marshal and the horde of the Necromongers, Riddick spoke. "So, this is home?"

Shiira walked forward, placing her hand on his shoulder. "Yes, my son." She lifted him to his feet, and embraced him. "Welcome home, Riddick." Like instinct, she began to rub his back as he slowly wrapped his arms around her. Richard came forward, as well, looking his son in the eye before embracing him; tears flowed down his face as he looked into the face of his son for the first time.

Knowing that it would take a long time for him to heal from this, Lyka walked back into the ship to grab her satchel of weapons before going down the hill to her old home. Time and patience would heal the deep wounds that Necroism had carved into her and her brother, and so she would wait.

Over the next few days, Lyka became more at home. She had received a small home from her mother in the market quarter of the main town, and that in itself gave her an opportunity to explore. She explored the marketplace, furnished her new home, and began to build a personal library. She made an acquaintance with the local sword smith, and he hired her on as one of his apprentices.

Her mother made constant visits, making sure that she was settling in alright. It was the constant presence and long overdue encouragement from her mother and the people who saw her every day that fuelled Lyka's determination to learn how to utilize her gifts properly. After only a month in an environment filled with a support service, she was able to read the minds of others like it was second nature, able to control her visions to come only when she allowed them to, and to mediate to empty her mind of all unnecessary thoughts. Lyka learned to embrace her visions as a gift and not as the curse that plagued her. Soon after she had accepted that, her mother began to train her as the next leader of their people. Her people helped her to once become a Furyan, to embrace her true heritage without shame and to at last shed the guise of a New Meccan student-turned- Necromonger Purifier. At last, she could be herself.

Riddick, too, benefited from being on Furya for the first time since his birth. He too was given a home by Shiira, only his was on the outskirt of the main city. He would be seen among the army of Furya, training with his father and the soldiers and keeping his skills honed for use. Everywhere he went, people cheered him for his so-called crimes outside of the world. On Furya, he would be safe for their planet had an erratic orbit that was seen only once every twenty years. No one on Helion Prime was aware of his presence and was still alive.

No longer did either of them wear black, a constant reminder of their old lives. Riddick donned the more earthly colors of brown, green, and grey: the colors of a soldier. Lyka continued to dress like she used to at the university: subdued and muted rainbow colors with hints of brightness around the hems as decorations. Both of them let their eye-shine go uncovered, watching as people recognized them as true alpha Furyans. Lyka wore the golden torque of the seer around her neck, while Riddick donned a single silver ring with a smooth piece of jet on his ring finger; Lyka never asked him about his choice, but she knew in her heart that he bore it as a constant reminder of Kyra's sacrifice, and that he would never take that ring off for the rest of his days.

At last, they had both come to find a place where they could both belong as who and what they were, not for what people expected them to be in order to fit the mould that society proclaimed for all of its citizens. At last, they were free.


End file.
